Dubai: Making up your Dream Team is the ultimate pastime for the cricket romantics and hence the International Cricket Council (ICC) was spot on by opening up such a poll to name one's greatest Test team of all time.
The first Test between India and England, scheduled to begin at Lord's in a week's time, will be the 2,000th one — and what better interactive tool than this to engage the fans in drawing up one's own list.
"Test cricket is the pinnacle format of our great sport and it's important we continue to protect and promote it so that it grows even stronger over the next 2,000 matches," said Haroon Lorgat, CEO of ICC while announcing the online poll. The deadline for voting ended yesterday night, and the ICC will be announcing the Dream Team soon.
The task at hand was simple — all the cricket buff had to do was to pick 11 players from a shortlist of 60 all-time greats provided by the ICC.
To avoid a random selection, they had decided on the categories of players to be picked so that there is a basic team composition — two openers, three middle order batsmen, an all-rounder, a wicketkeeper, three fast bowlers and a spinner.
Such classification, however, has its dangers as yours truly had a hard time trying to choose between Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne — as you could only choose one spin ace.
As I set about the onerous task of choosing my greatest Test team, I decided to limit my choice strictly to those I have been fortunate enough to watch in action from the early '80s till today.
Changing nature
While the debate for an all-time great Test XI may be more academic and self-gratifying, I find it a little unfair to pit the greats against each other because of the changing nature of the game over the last three to four decades.
To give an example — there has been arguably no greater batsman in the game than Sir Don — but then cricket historians have often argued that he had in his time primarily faced the English bowlers and did not have to face the fearsome West Indies quicks in their prime. At the other end of the spectrum, one can argue if Sachin Tendulkar could have been as successful if he had been plying his trade in the era of uncovered wickets, antique equipment and no restriction on bouncers!
Having grown up following the game closely from the early '80s, one feels lucky to see the transition of one golden generation to another and being spoilt for choice. There have been quite a few regrets here — if one was not being able to "pick" both Warne and Murali, the other one was not being able to find room for the awesome Viv Richards in the playing XI.
In a batting line-up where the opening partnership of Sunil Gavaskar and Gordon Greenidge can complement each other with their solidity and aggression, my prime positions in the middle order from No 3 to 5 had to go to men (Ponting, Tendulkar and Lara) who could shift gears according to the situation and play the long innings.
The battle for allrounders was easily the toughest call. To dangle a choice of Imran-Kapil-Botham-Hadlee before you and ask to name one is almost "criminal" — but then this is the fun of Dream Teams. My vote goes to King Khan here just ahead of Kapil Dev, largely because one needs a larger-than-life character to captain a team of such strong personalties. For fast bowlers, I had plumped for the ferocity of Malcolm Marshall over two other West Indian greats on the shortlist — Curtley Ambrose and Coutrney Walsh.
New ball
The sight of Marshall launch into his angular run-up and share the new ball with Imran Khan at his prime would be enough to send shivers down the spine of any opening batsman worth his salt.
Once the ball is a little old, Wasim Akram would come in handy to get the reverse swing going while Glenn McGrath can ensure there is no breathing space for the batsmen even during close stages of any session. Till of course the "Smiling Assassin" Murali gets into action with his bag of tricks.
Let the debate begin!
MY DREAM TEAM
- Sunil Gavaskar
- Gordon Greenidge
- Ricky Ponting
- Sachin Tendulkar
- Brian Lara
- Imran Khan (c)
- Adam Gilchrist
- Wasim Akram
- Malcolm Marshall
- Glenn McGrath
- Muttiah Muralitharan
