Cricket legends..Dale Steyn and Wasim Akram bowling in tandem? Here's a Test side where that happens |
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| CCF Committee (cypruscricketfedaration11@gmail.com) | |
| 10/01/2022 | |
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Compiling lists is a common hobby. If I have some time and see the back of an envelope, I make lists of different kinds - the ten greatest Tamil films, Roger Federer's greatest matches, a collection of match-saving Test innings, ten best songs sung by the magnificent Yesudas, and so on. You may throw the list away or keep it. That does not matter. It is the pleasure of listing your choices that matters.
Cricket aficionados make lists often, and almost always they are all-time XIs. Once in a while, there come such compilations by cricket luminaries.
A few months ago, I invited all the cricket enthusiasts who read my articles to submit their own all-time best XVs. Everyone was free to offer their lists. and all had the same rights, including myself. The only rider was that it was not just a matter of listing 15 names; they needed to make up a proper, balanced, Test team.
It was an exhilarating exercise and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even when the programming became quite tricky, since I had to find ways of solving non-standard inputs from many readers. For example, there were seven to eight different ways in which Muthiah Muralidaran's name was spelt.
I received a total of 159 entries - 70 to the Talking_Cricket Group and my email, and 89 through the comments link to my pieces. Out of these, seven needed to be rejected for reasons given later in this article. I received the first entry, from Reuben Finklestein, within a couple of hours after I sent my email on September 5 last year. The last entry was received on the morning of December 16, from S Anand, making it a total of 152 entries: we got past Ian Botham but fell one short of Brian Lara and Kusal Perera.)
The top 20 players readers voted for are:
1. Muthiah Muralidaran - 135 votes 2. Shane Warne - 131 3. Don Bradman - 126 4. Garry Sobers - 124 5. Malcolm Marshall - 106 6. Sachin Tendulkar - 104 7. Wasim Akram - 97 8. Adam Gilchrist - 93 9. Brian Lara - 90 10. Sunil Gavaskar - 89 11. Viv Richards - 86 12. Glenn McGrath - 80 13. Imran Khan - 76 14. Jack Hobbs - 72 15. Jacques Kallis - 59 16. Dale Steyn - 51 17. Kumar Sangakkara - 51 18. Steven Smith - 45 19. Richard Hadlee - 43 20. Dennis Lillee - 40
It is probably not a surprise that Murali leads the chart, featuring in 135 XVs. He finds acceptance across the globe. It is also not a surprise that Shane Warne comes in second, with four fewer votes. It might be a slight surprise that Don Bradman was not selected by 26 readers. This is possible because quite a few readers decided to stick only to players they have seen or followed. The popularity of Garry Sobers is revealed by the fact that he is only two votes behind Bradman. These four players received more than 120 votes each.
Fifth place for Malcolm Marshall is quite unexpected. Who would have imagined that he would poll ahead of Sachin Tendulkar?
There are the six players with over 100 votes. No one can be surprised at the next 14 selections. Barring Jack Hobbs, the other players - Wasim Akram, Adam Gilchrist, Brian Lara, Sunil Gavaskar, Viv Richards, Glenn McGrath, Imran Khan, Jacques Kallis and Dale Steyn - have played in the past 50 years. Perhaps the only slight surprise is that I expected Imran to get a few more votes. Rounding out the top 20 are Kumar Sangakkara, Steven Smith, Richard Hadlee and Dennis Lillee. read more: on Espncricinfo |
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