This is going to be perhaps a bit of an indulgent post …
Last Test Match of the summer tomorrow ! Almost the last cricket … there’s this 5 day game at The Oval and then there’s T20 Finals day at Edgbaston, Birmingham the weekend after. Not sure where England are touring this year. (New Zealand and South Africa).
I have the Sky Sports cricket channel on at the moment, mostly because having the news channels on in the background gets too depressing. It’s muted though, music beats the sound of old cricket matches. I currently have a Kings of Leon track on and soon it’ll be the Sirius album by Clannad. (Fuzzy is also being happily addicted to a new game, GreedFall, on the laptop).
Anyway. The daft thought was …. what’s the best England side out of players that I’ve seen ? Let’s go.
These kinds of posts always have to have a restriction and this time it’s : This must be a player where I’ve watched a match they played in (on telly is ok), which puts the time region from around the mid 1980s.
Opening up the innings we have : Mike Atherton and Alastair Cook. You need resilience from the opening batsmen and that’s precisely what this pair are. The openers lay the foundation for the rest of the batting to pile on the runs. Atherton earned his nickname of “Iron Mike” and I think the Chef could have scored the most runs of anyone in Test cricket but there’s always a time that you have to call it a day. In Atherton’s case, he had a degenerative condition with his back, which forced him to stop. Cook had just had enough of it.
I missed a lot of Mike Atherton’s career though due to a) playing on the weekends … b) Sky taking the games off terrestrial and c) BBC having very little respect for the sport by showing pretty much anything instead of it. Of all the players, I wanted to bat like Atherton. (and bowl like Devon Malcolm but I was never as tall or quick !)
Number 3 needs a mix of that opening bat resilience and potential to turn that into attack. There’s always the chance that one or both of the openers just gets a really good ball so your No 3 needs to be able to stick around. Ricky Ponting did this expertly for a long time for Australia and did it exceptionally. But this isn’t about the Aussies. My number 3 would be Joe Root. Although don’t let him captain the side. He’s a bit off his game at the moment but when he’s on it, he’s exceptional.
Skipping ahead a little to number 7 and the wicket keeper … Apart from one I’ll come to in a minute, I have a pretty low opinion of pretty much all the England wicket keepers I’ve seen. Ben Foakes was excellent with the gloves but got found out with the bat. Prior was a nutter and his glovework could be very dodgy. Geraint Jones – no. Bairstow is an idiot who has poor glovework and has actually introduced flaws into his batting, he’s a worse player than before he started tinkering.
So who is the keeper ?
Sarah Taylor. She is an absolute legend. Her glovework has always been magical. You expect a wicket keeper to stop everything that gets past the batsman and get the occasional stumping and all of the catches. Taylor does that …. and then produces stumpings and catches that no one has a right to pull off. It’s amazing. And when she’s happy and on it, there’s an effervescent bubbly fun erupting from under the helmet that must be so infectious for the rest of the team. It’s better as a cricket team when you’re having fun, it means you’re doing well. Or it can lift the team into doing better. I used to be really noisy on the field, except when I went into injury survival mode or if I got put on the boundary where I’d get bored.
Sarah Taylor suffers from a quite crippling depression though, focused around perfectionism. I think she described it as “I got to number 1. I can only get worse from there.” That’s really, really tough to deal with as a player. I didn’t hit it like that but I had something different hit me with my bowling. When I could no longer bowl but saw really poor bowlers on my team, I would have very guilty thoughts of “I should be bowling, I am massively better than that and not bowling is making us lose the game.” I hated losing.
This is an amazing player. Even without the inspiration crazy amazing stuff she’ll pull off, she’s easily the best wicket keeper that I’ve ever seen. Saw Jack Russell too. She’s better. Bats really well too when on her game, classic form and crafty innovation.
1 – Mike Atherton, 2 – Alastair Cook, 3 – Joe Root, 7 – Sarah Taylor
(or Alec Stewart if I have to pick a bloke. Great keeper, a titan with the bat. I have huge respect for the attitude he had whenever I saw him play. He’s someone who you would instinctively rely on.)
My all rounder is Ben Stokes at number 6. He could get into any side as either batsman or bowler and regularly produces match winning performances in either role. A super dependable player, another one who hates not giving what he thinks he’s worth to the side. I rate him far ahead of Andrew Flintoff, who occasionally displayed his potential with the bat. Great bowler though. I only saw the last days of Ian Botham and he was struggling massively with back problems.
The spin bowler is Graeme Swann at 8. Another one with a winning attitude and that kind of attitude will carry along a cricket team. The kind of attitude that refuses to admit defeat until the scorebook says you lost. Anyway, Swann had a special technique where he bowled with overspin, which means the ball doesn’t just turn in to the right hander, it also hurries on a bit. Excellent for unsettling them and rushing the batsman into a mistake.
Opening bowlers have to include James Anderson. He’s England’s best bowler out of total merit, knowledge and craftiness. And you know what, Ian Botham, included as a bowler, also for skill and craftiness. When my action was having trouble as a result of basically forgetting my calibrations, watching Botham figure his action out helped me realign what I was doing and also to figure out new tricks.
I’m trying to think of an ultra fast assault with a deadly weapon fast bowler but I think Jofra Archer is the first 95+mph bowler I’ve seen for England. These guys make things happen when conditions are totally against the bowlers.
3rd seamer is Darren Gough. Not the tallest … but one of the most cunning. I suspect that with all of the new innovation that’s come into the game in the last 10 years, he’d have been even better now than when he played. That’s something important, the game has moved on since the days of Atherton and Botham. However, if you got talent, talent tells.
Who are the other batsmen ?
For those not in the list, there’s :
Kevin Pietersen. Never played for England, always played for himself. The best batsman this century before Steve Smith emerged but … fatal for pretty much any team he played for.
Devon Malcolm. A god among fast bowlers … but also erratic and often not really on the same planet.
Jofra Archer. Mentioned above but a bit too new. There is massive promise here though. I’ve only really had “This guy could be awesome” feelings about bowlers like James Anderson and Dale Steyn when they started … but Archer provokes that instinct too.
Steve Harmison. Bowled from a great height but without much accuracy or intelligence. I watched an incredibly frustrating session in the West Indies where England should have won but the batsmen could just leave 90% of everything being bowled. That’s not how you win games.
James Taylor in the batting. A very promising player when he came into the side (to be unforgivably written off by his hero KP) but was lost to the game due to a potentially fatal heart condition. Good to see that he got through that one.
Gooch and Gower – didn’t see them play, slightly before my time.
Nasser Hussain. Always gave everything for England but … other players are better !
Andrew Strauss. A very vulnerable opening batsman and his handling of KP was disastrous.
The others in the middle order would be Michael Vaughan and Alec Stewart, plus Paul Collingwood if I’m not allowed to have Sarah Taylor in the side. Vaughan had a style in his batting that just made it look so easy. The best players look as if they have so much more time than everyone else and Vaughan had more time than anyone. I’ve mentioned Alec Stewart above, he’s an absolute titan. Incredibly dependable, with an over my dead body attitude to whether he’d allow the opposition to get the upper hand.
Paul Collingwood got the nickname “Brigadier Block”, partly I think because he may have been starting to struggle physically with the batting. Also because he could defend incredibly if necessary. But that’s not his true strength in any side, he was on another level when in the field. Acrobatic and inspirational. You need players like that to pick off catches, to stop runs they have no excuse being anywhere near, to lift the side.
Cricket can be a really tough, grindy game and it can take an inspirational special moment to lift the side, wake them up and get them performing again. Sometimes it’s a quiet word to the bowler to reset their minds to On again. (Done that a couple of times!). Sometimes it’s a bit of Paul Collingwood magic in the field (Done that too, loved it). Or it can be an effervescent bubbly wicket keeper being involved, being daft, lifting the side through personality and pulling out something magical that’ll be on highlight reels for decades to come.
What’s the line up ? Here we are :
1 – Alastair Cook
2 – Michael Atherton (also captaining)
3 – Michael Vaughan
4 – Joe Root
5 – Alec Stewart
6 – Ben Stokes
7 – Ian Botham
8 – Sarah Taylor keeping wicket (or Paul Collingwood if I’m not allowed the legend)
9 – Graeme Swann
10 – Darren Gough (or Jofra Archer if he fulfils his potential)
11 – James Anderson
I think that side would be more than a match for any team.
This is hugely a matter of personal opinion though ! Every cricket fan reading this will have a different 11. Some will pick Jack Russell. Some will go back in time to Gower, Edrich, Gooch, Randall, Willis, Phil de Freitas and Gladstone Small. Phil Tufnell was a great bowler too. Didn’t see him play much. John Emburey ?
So many amazing players. Only enough room for 11 of them !