Vanilla Test Draft (lemon twist Willy Wonka Edition) Voting - Round 1 (Pick 3)

[shortpitched713]

Voting will be in 2 rounds, with the top 2 advancing from this round to the final voting round. Please pick who you think are the top 3 ( not your own team ). Teams are below:


JOJOXI

Graeme Smith
Virender Sehwag
George Headley
Brian Lara
Steve Smith (6)
Steve Waugh (5)
Adam Gilchrist (wk)
Shaun Pollock (3)
Alan Davidson (1)
Shane Warne (4)
Fred Trueman (2)

Bitmap

Barry Richards
Geoffrey Boycott
Rahul Dravid
Graeme Pollock
Wally Hammond
Les Ames+
Keith Miller
Ray Lindwall
Malcolm Marshall
Hedley Verity
Curtly Ambrose

CricZo XI (kingkallis)

Jack Hobbs /
Gordon Greenidge /
Greg Chappell / o
Denis Compton /
Clyde Walcott /
Garfield Sobers / o
Alan Knott + /
Richie Benaud o / (c)
Dennis Lillee o
Micheal Holding o
Joel Garner o

shortpitched713

01. Bill Lawry
02. Matthew Hayden
03. Everton Weekes
04. Jacques Kallis (3-5)
05. Javed Miandad *
06. Joe Root
07. Kumar Sangakkara +
08. Ravichandran Ashwin (4-5)
09. Richard Hadlee (1)
10. Muttiah Muralitharan (3-4)
11. Allan Donald (2)

Himannv

01. Len Hutton /
02. Herbert Sutcliffe /
03. Ricky Ponting /
04. Neil Harvey /
05. Ken Barrington /
06. Frank Worrell* /o
07. BJ Watling+ /
08. Wasim Akram o
09. Dale Steyn o
10. Clarrie Grimmett o
11. Glenn McGrath o

CricAddict

Sunil Gavaskar
Bob Simpson
Viv Richards
Sachin Tendulkar
Allan Border(c)
Ian Botham
Imran Khan
John Waite (wk)
Bill O'Reilly
Waqar Younis
Sydney Barnes


Please feel free to post descriptions of your teams in the thread below. Thanks again to everyone who participated, and thanks in advance to all who watched the draft and will vote!

 

[shortpitched713]

Recapping my team:

01. Bill Lawry
02. Matthew Hayden
03. Everton Weekes
04. Jacques Kallis (3-5)
05. Javed Miandad *
06. Joe Root
07. Kumar Sangakkara +
08. Ravichandran Ashwin (4-5)
09. Richard Hadlee (1)
10. Muttiah Muralitharan (3-4)
11. Allan Donald (2)

So the idea with this team, is to be absolutely dominant at home, while having the quality to be competitive away from home. The home conditions are obviously the subcontinent. First thing that pops to mind is having the pair of spinners, and off spinners at that, which could be counted as a negative in less turning conditions. But with Murali's freak turn, and Ashwin's variations, these two have tended to be more than capable (especially Murali) of overcoming such circumstances. And on a spinning track, gosh Ashwin might be even better than Murali in that circumstance. TL;DR, these aren't your typical off-spinners bowling in tandem:

But the whole team is full of busters in the subcontinent, with almost all of them (with the exceptions of the seamers in Pakistan) having exceptional records in the subcontinent, and the batsmen being phenomenal players of spin.

Right from the opening partnership of Hayden and Lawry being a complementary contrast of bash and block, the entire team alternates between dogged grafters and vicious stroke-makers. For tougher bowling circumstances, I'm liking the ability of Hadlee and Murali in particular to bowl marathon seam or spin spells as required, hopefully mitigating the use of too many Kallis overs as the 5th bowling option unless conditions favor him. Team does #batdeep too with Ashwin and Hadlee at 8 and 9, so there's that.

Finally there's the captain selection of Miandad. He has a phenomenal record for someone who was overlooked for that role until the very end of his career. The only real choice out of these to lead this side, but one I'm more than comfortable with.

 

[JOJOXI]

A question ahead of poll closing - do votes from this round carry on into final round. I.e. if someone voted Himannv in this round but then didn't vote in the 2nd Round does that 1st round vote still get acknowledged?

 

[shortpitched713]

No, only votes in that round are counted at that time.

 

[JOJOXI]

Sorry I've just revisited this thread and realised the silliness of my question. For some reason think I was mentally thinking it was vote for best side in this round even though I voted for best 3 sides (in my opinion) just as the voting thread asked for