England v NZ, 3rd Test, Trent Bridge, 5th-9th June

Basil wrote:I'd have Bell open in the ODIs.

Merlin wrote:

Basil wrote:I'd have Bell open in the ODIs.

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Basil wrote:I'd have Bell open in the ODIs. Essentially, he's an orthodox batsman not given to great flights of unorthodoxy. If he opens, he has the advantage of being able to play the ball into the gaps caused by the powerplay fielding restrictions.

It's a risk though, because he would be opening with Cook.

Allan D wrote:

Basil wrote:I'd have Bell open in the ODIs. Essentially, he's an orthodox batsman not given to great flights of unorthodoxy. If he opens, he has the advantage of being able to play the ball into the gaps caused by the powerplay fielding restrictions.

It's a risk though, because he would be opening with Cook.

Sounds like Brearley and Boycott in the 1979 WC Final. They put on 129 together against the Windies' attack. Trouble was it took them 38 overs to do it!

PearlJ wrote:Who was it that used to say 'execute our skills' a lot?

PeterCS wrote:

PearlJ wrote:Who was it that used to say 'execute our skills' a lot?

Stalin? Mao?

PearlJ wrote:Who was it that used to say 'execute our skills' a lot?

Dello wrote:

PearlJ wrote:Who was it that used to say 'execute our skills' a lot?

Some Stralian or other. I've heard Drunky use it .

Allan D wrote:(the other being Marcus T whom he replaced after MT decided to go into the wilderness). :

Cracka wrote:

Allan D wrote:(the other being Marcus T whom he replaced after MT decided to go into the wilderness). :

It wasn't his decision.

PearlJ wrote:No, it was his imaginary friend, Nigel's decision. He advises him on all cricketing matters.

Geoffrey Trueman wrote:

PearlJ wrote:No, it was his imaginary friend, Nigel's decision. He advises him on all cricketing matters.

Git, you beat me to it.

Allan D wrote:

ten years after wrote:

A very enjoyable post Allan_D but i disagree with some of the quoted paragraph. So few test cricketers have met your criteria for all rounder status that the term has to be interpreted more broadly or it would have no real meaning. Imran was an all time great bowler and averaged mid 50s batting higher than no. 7 so he qualifies. Aubrey Faulkner was test class as both batsman and bowler. These two may be the only two definite all rounders on this basis.

However i think Botham belongs there too. Undoubtedly test class as a bowler he batted 5 or 6 for the bulk of his career and would have been selected as a batsman alone for the middle 50 tests of his career. I suspect Procter would have joined the list if given the chance.

Sobers, good bowler though he was, would not have had a long career for the West Indies if he batted at 11. Kapil Dev would have played very few tests just as a batsman. He rarely batted above 7 and with little success when he did. His batting may have won him a few caps on its own account in the late 80s but by that time his bowling was barely of test standard.

Your good bio of Rhodes illustrated that he can hardly be considered an all-rounder at test level at all. He was either a batsman or a bowler but rarely both. His position in history is guaranteed by his bowling up to 1905 during which time he was probably the best Slow Left Arm bowler who has ever lived. God knows what he may have achieved had he not decided he fancied his hand as a batsman.

I agree with most of the above although I think you make some howlers as egregious as those I made such as:

ten years after wrote: Sobers, good bowler though he was, would not have had a long career for the West Indies if he batted at 11

Really??? If I was wrong about Kallis this statement is equally preposterous, if not more so, especially to anyone who saw him bowl, as I did, even in the latter stages of his career. With 235 wickets @ 34.04 he would have been a precious asset to any West Indian side even if he had been marked "absent 0" in the scorebook of every Test he ever played in. He began his career as a finger-spinner, then learned to bowl orthodox and unorthodox wrist-spin before turning to left-arm pace and finally left-arm swing, all to Test level. Ray Illingworth reckoned that the 1960 English tourists (of whom he was one) faced a four-man pace attack in Hall, Griffith, Sobers and Chester Watson equally as potent as any of the sides that were later fielded under Clive Lloyd (although, of course, he had no experience of the latter) .
Your next sentences are equally bizarre:

ten years after wrote: Kapil Dev would have played very few tests just as a batsman. He rarely batted above 7 and with little success when he did.

5248 runs@ 31.05 is not a bad record with the bat to me especially as it included 8 centuries, only one less than Stephen Fleming made in his whole career, 3 of which were against successive West Indian pace attacks (1 in the Caribbean) over a period of almost a decade. This was 3 more than Botham ever made against the same attack in the same period. Botham's lacuna against the strongest attack of his era throws a long shadow over his claim to be considered a great all-rounder. This is not the case with Kapil Dev.

As for his batting position the same criticism might have been levelled against Jessop who rarely batted above 7 for England. Was he not really a batsman? Archie MacLaren once said that he would have selected Jessop purely as a fielder even had he not been able to bat as his mere presence on the field induced doubt and hesitation in the batsman's mind before taking a run. Jessop's occasional flourishes with the bat, therefore, came as a significant bonus to England.

In the 3rd Test against South Africa at Port Elizabeth in December 1992 Kapil Dev went out to bat in India's 2nd innings with the score at 27-5 (soon to be 31-6) and facing a rampant Allan Donald. He proceeded to make 129 out of the remaining 188 runs scored. Although unlike Jessop at The Oval 90 years earlier it did not affect the outcome it was an innings of Jessop-like proportions and I doubt if the spectators or the South African players (particularly Donald) who felt the rough edge of Kapil's bat that day would have agreed with your assessment that Kapil Dev "had little success" with the bat.

Your comments about Rhodes are factually accurate but miss the point. In his Test career Rhodes took 127 wickets @26.97 in 58 matches while scoring 2325 runs @30.19 but he took 76 of those wickets in his first 4 series (3 of them at home) between 1899-1905 in which he usually batted in the last 3 and 1235 runs in the 4 series against South Africa and Australia immediately preceding WWI (3 of them away) in which he bowled only casually.