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Three Aussie legends who would have dominated T20 cricket

7th February, 2017
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Stuart MacGill. (Image: paddynapper CC BY-SA 2.0)
Expert
7th February, 2017
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T20 cricket now controls the Australian summer, with the Big Bash League spanning nearly six weeks. So which former wearers of the baggy green would have dominated the newest format in their prime?

Stuart MacGill
MacGill is best remembered as a quality Test spinner, who managed to outbowl the great Shane Warne in many of the matches they played together. Yet the leg-spinner was even better with the white ball.

MacGill’s record in domestic 50-over cricket for NSW was astonishing. Not only are his 124 wickets the second most in the history of Australian domestic one-day cricket, but his average of 22.36 is the best among the top 50 wicket takers. He’s also the only player in that top 50 to average two wickets per game.

These are freakish numbers.

To underscore just how good MacGill was with the white ball, consider that his overall List A average of 22.52 was even better than Warne’s mark of 24.61.

MacGill’s strength as short-form spinner was his all-out-attack approach. He sought wickets as a priority and was remarkably successful at making key breakthroughs in the middle overs, when the batting team was looking to set a platform.

As he imparted ferocious revolutions on his deliveries – arguably even more than Warne – MacGill was incredibly difficult to attack unless the batsman got right to the pitch of the ball.

Even as a 40-year-old who hadn’t played a white-ball game in five years, MacGill was effective in the 2011-12 Big Bash League, taking seven wickets at 24.

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In his prime, he would have hoarded T20 wickets through stumpings and skied catches as batsmen were forced to go after him but were brought undone by his fizzing deliveries.

Tom Moody
The Australian selectors would be salivating over Moody were he still in his peak.

First and foremost, they’d love the option of picking him at six in the Test team, as he was a genuine all-rounder who averaged 46 with the bat and 31 with the ball in first-class cricket.

But the giant West Australian also would have been tailor-made for the T20 format, with his astonishing hitting, and clever and accurate medium pace. Not to mention that Moody possessed one of the strongest arms ever seen on a cricket field, capable of routinely reducing twos into ones out on the boundary.

In the 1990s, Moody was arguably the most powerful striker in world cricket, launching 100-metre-plus sixes at a time when such length was extremely rare. Just look at what he did with a toothpick bat back in 1990.

Moody also strikes me as the kind of bowler who would have adapted well to the shortest format. In 50-over cricket he was relentlessly precise, swung the ball consistently, earned startling bounce, and mixed up his pace beautifully.

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Dean Jones
Jones was the best ODI batsman on the planet from 1987 through to 1993.

During this period he was the highest runscorer worldwide by a huge margin and his ODI average of 50 was also easily the best in an era when anything above 40 was considered elite.

He was the most complete batsman ODI cricket had ever seen. Jones had tremendous power and, for that time, a remarkable range of strokes. He complemented that by working the gaps with deft touches and turning twos into ones in a manner which changed the face of batsmanship in the format.

Jones was also phenomenal at pacing an innings – like Michael Bevan after him, he never got flustered if he faced a string of dot balls or if the required run rate started climbing. The Victorian had supreme confidence in his ability to bend the game to his will.

Jones would have been a Virat Kohli-style master chaser in T20s had he been born 20 years later.

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