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England's Heaven XI

Uncle Leo

This cook is an anti-semite
Joined
Nov 19, 2003
Messages
23,031
Location
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In light of this lovely quote from Swiss Tony on the Trevor Bailey thread:

"R I P Trevor,steady the ship and steer home the the good ship Englands heaven X1,God bless."

Who would make your England XI, based solely on those no longer with us? With the likes of Gooch, Gower, Dexter, Botham, Knott, Underwood and Ilott all still on this mortal coil, a few contenders for an all-time England XI will not be permitted so it could be interesting.

I'll make a start, for which please excuse my limited knowledge of cricket beyond the last few decades. I'm interested to hear what those of you with, ahem, shall we say, longer memories, come up with.

Jack Hobbs
Len Hutton (c)
Wally Hammond
Colin Cowdrey
Denis Compton
WG Grace
Godfrey Evans (wk)
Trevor Bailey
Alec Bedser
Fred Trueman
Jim Laker
 
Dear old Swiss, the Rudyard Kipling of the 'Zone :smiles:...

John Snow, the tormentor of the Aussies in the early '70s, could stake a claim.

I expect Harry to clean up the tail on this one however. :winking:
 
In light of this lovely quote from Swiss Tony on the Trevor Bailey thread:

"R I P Trevor,steady the ship and steer home the the good ship Englands heaven X1,God bless."

Who would make your England XI, based solely on those no longer with us? With the likes of Gooch, Gower, Dexter, Botham, Knott, Underwood and Ilott all still on this mortal coil, a few contenders for an all-time England XI will not be permitted so it could be interesting.

I'll make a start, for which please excuse my limited knowledge of cricket beyond the last few decades. I'm interested to hear what those of you with, ahem, shall we say, longer memories, come up with.

Jack Hobbs
Len Hutton (c)
Wally Hammond
Colin Cowdrey
Denis Compton
WG Grace
Godfrey Evans (wk)
Trevor Bailey
Alec Bedser
Fred Trueman
Jim Laker

Other than Ben Hollioake (and you'll want a spritely 12th man), I don't think I've seen anyone play who's qualified for this list but with that qualification there appears to be one glaring omission: Ken Barrington

6806 runs @ 58.67:Worthy::Worthy:

I think my XI would be

1. Hobbs
2. Hutton
3. Sutcliffe
4. Hammond
5. Grace
6. Barrington
7. Evans
8. Trueman
9. Barnes
10. Bedser
11. Lohmann

Rounding out the squad Compton, Statham and Laker
 
I would definitely have S F Barnes in my team, another glaring omission is that of Peter May. Others worth a mention are Wilfred Rhodes and Les Ames. I think I would be inclined to have Hobbs & Sutcliffe as my openers with Hammond as skipper leving out Len Hutton. And a good call with Lohmann YB, another from that era worth a shout would be Tom Richardson, but Lohmann gets my vote.

Therefore my XI would be.

Hobbs
Sutcliffe
May
Hammond
Compton (just edging out Ken Barrington)
Grace
Ames
Rhodes
Trueman
Barnes
Lohmann
 
I would definitely have S F Barnes in my team, another glaring omission is that of Peter May. Others worth a mention are Wilfred Rhodes and Les Ames. I think I would be inclined to have Hobbs & Sutcliffe as my openers with Hammond as skipper leving out Len Hutton. And a good call with Lohmann YB, another from that era worth a shout would be Tom Richardson, but Lohmann gets my vote.

Therefore my XI would be.

Hobbs
Sutcliffe
May
Hammond
Compton (just edging out Ken Barrington)
Grace
Ames
Rhodes
Trueman
Barnes
Lohmann

Out of interest, which ones are you lucky enough to have seen play and which ones are you judging on reputation/stats?

Another name to throw into for bowlers is Larwood.
 
Out of interest, which ones are you lucky enough to have seen play and which ones are you judging on reputation/stats?

Another name to throw into for bowlers is Larwood.

I vaguely remember Peter May at the fag end of his career. Trueman was quite simply the best English fast bowler I've ever seen, classic side on action, strong as an ox, and a healthy dislike of Australians, and Southerners, and anyone who didn't come from "God's own county".

Ken Barrington was one of my first cricketing heroes and as you pointed out had a fantastic batting average, he was famously dropped for slow scoring by England after scoring a century against the Kiwis. Died tragically young at 51. Brian Statham was a fine bowler, 252 test wickets in an era when there much fewer tests.

I saw Compton and Laker in exhibitin / benefit games.

The rest by reputation and stats. Good call about Larwood, another bowler from the late 1800's who had good figues was Briggs.
 
I would definitely have S F Barnes in my team, another glaring omission is that of Peter May.

I started off with Barnes, but then realised Bailey hadn't made it, so my Essex bias took over. I contemplated May and did have him as captain (remembering that pre-Atherton, no-one had captained England in more Tests) but then remembered how John Woodcock in The Times will always bang on about him ceaselessly so left him out.

Interested to hear more about Lohmann....
 
I started off with Barnes, but then realised Bailey hadn't made it, so my Essex bias took over. I contemplated May and did have him as captain (remembering that pre-Atherton, no-one had captained England in more Tests) but then remembered how John Woodcock in The Times will always bang on about him ceaselessly so left him out.

Interested to hear more about Lohmann....

Here's a piece from cricinfo on Lohmann, another player of the era who died quite young. I've only really read about his exploits in Wisden, I'm not sure if there is a definitive biography about him anywhere.
 
I started off with Barnes, but then realised Bailey hadn't made it, so my Essex bias took over. I contemplated May and did have him as captain (remembering that pre-Atherton, no-one had captained England in more Tests) but then remembered how John Woodcock in The Times will always bang on about him ceaselessly so left him out.

Interested to hear more about Lohmann....

Lohmann has a Bradman-esque bowling average.

He averages 10.75. The next best bowling average is 16.43 (Barnes), which isn't far from the 3rd (16.53 - Turner of Aus), 4th (16.98 - Peel). You've then a small gap to Briggs (17.75) and another gap to Blythe (18.63) before you get the first of the post-WWII players (Wardle 20.39, Davidson 20.59) and then the modern era greats of Marshall, Garner, Ambrose, McGrath etc. around the high 20s and 21s. [You've a similar pattern for batsmen with Bradman miles ahead of everyone, then a select few in the 60s (Headley, Pollock and notable for this thread, Sutcliffe)* then those in the high 50s like Barrington, Hammond, Sobers, Hutton, Tendulkar, Weekes & Walcott etc]

It is however difficult to compare eras as averages across eras vary so much - the top 6 are all pre-WWII.

Where I think you can compare eras is by looking how players dominated their eras. Lohmann took ten wickets in an innings five times. That's the third most for England and he only played 18 tests! And it wasn't just by bowling a ridiculous number of overs as he's got the best strike-rate of all time (for the record, Dale Steyn is 2nd, the aforementioned Barnes 3rd and Waqar 4th showing that this compares to the modern era).

*FWIW Trott currently averages 61.53. This is third amongst players with 1,000 or more runs. It's very early days in his career though.
 
Just been looking through the archives, and found this line up from 1899. Drew the test, but not exactly short of class...

W G Grace
C B Fry
F S Jackson
W Gunn
KS Ranjitsinhji
T W Hayward
J T Tyldesley
W Storer
G H Hirst
W Rhodes
J T Hearne


Not all legends, but still some VERY good cricketers (or, in Fry's case, sportsmen) in there.
 
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