Ultimate Ashes challenge

[chickenfeet]

Just for fun, an ultimate Ashes line up. My best England and Australia teams. Qualification is that each player must have played at least one test post WW2. See if you can do better.

England

Hutton
Boycott
Hammond
Compton *
Barrington
Botham
Flintoff
Knott +
Laker
Statham
Tyson

Australia

Hayden
Gilchrist +
Bradman
Ponting
Chappell (GS)*
Waugh
Miller
Warne
Davidson
O'Reilly
Lindwall


Unluckiest not to be selected: Trueman, Higgs, Dexter, McGrath, Walters, Marsh

Comments

[kaet.livejournal.com]

I've always had a soft spot for Ales Stewart. Probably not borne out by the numbers. I saw him a couple of times, and it was excellent to see him hook shot after shot to deep square leg. That might have been because I was sitting there at the time (at Trent Bridge) (them being the cheap seats), and it being about the only delivery you can make sense of when you're sitting square to the wicket.

Jardine would liven things up, ;).

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Though, damn, didn't play post WWII. ;)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Yes. That rules out a lot of good players.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Stewart vs Knott is worth consideration (Stewart isn't close to making it as a specialist batsman). Stewart averaged about 5 more than Knott but, IMO, Knott was far superior as a wicket keeper and his skill with the gloves more than outweighs 5 runs/innings, especially as this keeper has to keep to Laker nd Barrington.