The ultimate accolade has to be bestowed upon four knights – Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Jack Hobbs, and Sir Vivian Richards – along with the likeable larrikin, Shane Keith Warne.
That was 11 years ago, with Warne, the only current player, at the peak of his leg-spinning powers.
Let’s turn the clock back to how Wisden – the cricketer’s bible – formatted this intriguing exercise.
There were 100 selectors: a mixture of former Test cricketers, cricket-writers, and historians;
* England (28) – Jonathan Agnew, Trevor Bailey, Jack Bannister, Sir Alec Bedser, Scyld Berry, Dickie Bird, Brian Close, Lord Cowdrey, Ted Dexter, Matthew Engel, Alf Gover, Tom Graveney, Frank Keating, Tony Lewis, George Mann, Vic Marks, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Derek Pringle, Nette Rheinberg, Mike Selvey, EW Swanton, Bob Taylor, Freddie Trueman, Crawford White, John Woodcock, Ian Wooldridge, and Peter Wynne-Thomas.
* Australia (20) – Greg Baum, Percy Beames, Richie Benaud, Bill Brown, Richard Cashman, Ian Chappell, Mike Coward, Alan Davidson, Gideon Haigh, Murray Hedgcock, John Inverarity, Bill Lawry, Peter McFarline, Jim Maxwell, Arthur Morris, Bobby Simpson, Cec Starr, and Steve Waugh.
* South Africa (11) – Ali Bacher, Eddie Barlow, Colin Bryden, Russell Endean, Trevor Goddard, Norman Gordon, Michael Owen-Smith, Peter Pollock, Krish Reddy, Peter van der Merwe, and John Waite.
* West Indies (11) – Gerry Alexander, Tom Becca, Sir Carlisle Burton, Tony Cozier, Esmond Kentish, Clive Lloyd, Reds Periera, Allan Rae, Donna Symmonds, Sir Clyde Walcott, and Sir Everton Weekes.
* India (10) – Mihir Bose, Dilip Doshi, Sunil Gavaskar, Ayaz Memon, Ramesh Mohan, Nirum Prabhu, Raj Singh, Kris Srikkanth, Polly Umrigar, and Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan.
* New Zealand (9) – Dick Brittenden, Don Cameron, Walter Hadlee, Don Neeley, John Reid, Bert Sutcliffe, Lindsay Weir, and John Wright.
* Pakistan (8) – Arif Abbasi, Fereshteh Gati, Hanif Mohammad, Intikhab Alam, Javed Burki, Mushtaq Mohammad, Omar Kureishi, and Qamar Ahmed.
* Sri Lanka (3) – Stanley Jayasingha, Ranjan Madugalle, and Gerry Vaidyasekera,
* And Zimbabwe (1) – Dave Houghton.
The brief was simple: name five cricketers each, in any order. Don’t concentrate on your own country or own era. No selector could vote for himself – and the infamous Englishman WG Grace was to be considered ineligible as Wisden regarded him as a cricketer of the 19th century.
Pretty straight-forward, but the net results were anything but straight-forward. Controversy raged for months.
Interestingly, not one of the 100 selectors nominated the final five, and among the maximum 500 votes, only 49 were nominated.
* 100 votes – the max – Sir Donald Bradman. How he would have loved to sneak in an extra four runs in last Test dig at The Oval in 1948 to average a career 100, instead of 99.94.
* 90 votes – Sir Garfield Sobers, how he missed out on 10 votes defies description.
* 30 – Sir Jack Hobbs.
* 27 – Shane Warne.
* 25 – Sir Vivian Richards.
* 19 – Dennis Lillee, and Sir Frank Worrell.
* 18 – Wally Hammond.
* 14 – Denis Compton.
* 13 – Sir Richard Hadlee, and Imran Khan.
* 11 – Syd Barnes, and Sir Leonard Hutton.
* 10 – Bill O’Reilly.
* 9 – Sir Ian Botham.
* 6 – Harold Larwood, Ray Lindwall, and Sachin Tendulkar.
* 5 – Richie Benaud, George Headley, amd Kapil Dev.
* 4 – Graeme Pollock, Wilfred Rhodes, and Victor Trumper.
* 3 – Godfrey Evans, Malcolm Marshall, and Wassie Akram.
* 2 – Sir Alec Bedser, Clarrie Grimmett, Freddie Trueman, and Frank Woolley.
* 1 – Curtley Ambrose, Colin Bland, Allan Border, Bernard Bosanquet, Bhagwat Chandrasekar, Ian Chappell, Lord Constantine, Allan Donald, Tich Freeman, Lance Gibbs, Stan McCabe, Bruce Mitchell, Maurice Tate, and Sir Pelham Warner.
The glaring omission? Brian Lara, the world record holder for the highest Test and first-class scores in cricket history, with 400 not out and an unbeaten 501. Not one vote in 500?
And you’d think the dashing Keith Miller was worth a vote. So, too, Greg Chappell, Graham Gooch, Hanif Mohammad, Barry Richards, and Jim Laker.
But not one vote between the seven of them. And the reason why the controversy will rage for many years to come.
That’s the beauty of the beast.
Ess Dee
Guest
Sachin did only one mistake...the geavest of all. He was not born outta white parents in either England or Australia
Muhammad Owais Ahmad
Guest
Where is Javed Miandad in the list?
Bernard McConville
Guest
Mate, with all due respect, you obviously are not old enough to have seen Viv play, even on tv. That scg test was one test, it was a raging turner, and the windies were already 3zip up - it was a dead rubber. Viv murdered spinners who were any less than awesome on raging turners. As for Barry Richards: who knows how great he would or wouldn't have been had he had a full career, but we will never know. You surely cannot include him on the strength of one test series. Same goes for Graeme Pollock who I am sure was one of the greatest ever - but he only played 23 tests and was at his peak at 26 years of age when his career ended. Michael Slater had similar stats after the same number of tests, at 25 years of age, and look what happened to him. Pollock, at 41 or 42, at least was still murdering the best aussie attacks in existence in the mid 8Os on those rebel tours, but Richards, one year younger was not there to do the same. Richards certainly murdered ordinary county bowlers in England through the 7Os and there were some world class bowling imports too. We will never know, and for that reason, it is a big call to consider him for an all time world XI.
Bernard McConville
Guest
My one day team is: Tendulkar, Gilchrist, Bradman, Richards, De Villiers, Sobers, Miller, Marshall, Akram, Warne and Garner. T-2O is too young and too irrelevant to even enter discussions, for mine. Cheers.
Bernard McConville
Guest
And pleasing to say we are well on the way to achieving that very consensus, as we agree on 8 of the starting 11 – I wonder how many panels of however many selectors ever reach that so early? lol
Bernard McConville
Guest
And pleasing to say we are well on the way to achieving that very consensus, as we agree on 8 of the starting 11 - I wonder how many panels of however many selectors ever reach that so early? lol
Bernard McConville
Guest
And the rest of my 17 member tour squad would be: Ian Healy, Dennis Lillee, George Headley, Viv Richards, Curtly Ambrose and Bill O'Reilly. But, as I say, we can certainly negotiate it as joint selectors and reach a consensus. Cheers.
Bernard McConville
Guest
Mine would be in batting order: Tendulkar, Gavaskar, Bradman, Lara, Ponting, Sobers, Gilchrist, Akram, Marshall, Warne and Steyn. But I think yours would also beat the best XI any other planet in the universe could put on the park. Cheers.
Bernard McConville
Guest
I think Lara's omission owes all to the fact that his career pretty much equally spanned two separate centuries - both the 21st AND 2Oth. On this basis, it says something for Tendulkar's inclusion that he actually made it in. If in another 84 years, Lara isn't included in a doubled in number list for both completed centuries, then we cricket lovers are in for a treat over the next 84 years in terms of players that are going to grace our international stage!
stephen wright
Guest
Hey sheek If Barnes was the greatest bowler how come you haven't mentioned his greatest adversary: not Hobbs but Trumper. Wilf Rhodes played tests for the Old Dart between 1890s and 1930s. He was asked in his twilight who was the greatest batsman he faced: not Bradman, Hobbs or Hammond. Your guessed it-Trumper! Get it right-they all learnt from Trumper Cheers
Jeff
Guest
Best Test 11 in batting order. 1. V. Richards. 2. M. Hayden 3. D. Bradman 4. S. Tendulkar 5. B. Lara 6. J. Kallis 7. G. Sobers. 8. A. Gilchrist 9. S. Warne 10. G. McGrath 11. M. Marshall 12th Man Ian Botham
John
Guest
For a batsman who famously couldn't lay bat on ball against Bob Holland, Sir Viv seems to have a lot of votes. Absolutely hopeless against spinners My late father born before the great war saw all the greats up to the late 80 He thought Barry Richards was the best he had seen. Better than McCabe, hutton, Hobbs , hammond and Bradman My self i would put Barry above lara and tendulkar. Virtually all the top guys who played against him said he was the best
Sean
Guest
Rubbish. Chappell is the better than border and waugh. Take a look at the era he played and what the nearest batsman averaged. He is a league above. As Geoff Armstrong wrote: 'In the 1970's and 80's scoring runs was a tough time... ...but not for Greg Chappell'
GregL
Guest
Chappell was great but lets not go overboard, on his day he was amazing and the equal of Richards, just not quite with the same level of destruction but he sure could grind an attack into near suicidal tendencies.
GregL
Guest
Oh but I would certainly leave Chappell out of of my Aussie XI, I rate Ponting and Waugh a long way ahead of Chappell and also dare I say it, Clarke and Hayden and Gilchrist and Border.
GregL
Guest
You also forget one very very important fact. Pitches in Bradmans time were nowhere near as reliable as modern pitches and conditions, he had to play on wet almost unplayable wickets often like all his mates and predecessors, YET HE MADE tons like clockwork and destroyed every attack out there. Tendulkar has made most of his runs on dead, flat pitches and played against many very weak bowling outfits like Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. You see we can also use stats to argue against your "theories".
GregL
Guest
Yeah of course Kalai, bowlers like Alec Bedser and Maurice Tate and Learie Constantine were pure garbage weren't they ???, I am being very sarcastic by the way. No matter how you try to word it Bradman is the greatest, and has no clallengers ever. By you theory all the top batsmen back then should be averaging at least 85.00, please get over yourself, you never see Sachin running around comparing himself to the DON, he is humble and realistic, unlike you however. You should be asking, who is the number two batsman of all time instead of making a fool of yourself. Number two is highly debateable, we have Hobbs as main contender but there are others, like Hammond and Sachin and others that could make that shortlist. The Don is the best of all time, in fact almost twice as good as anyone else, accept it, build a bridge and move on.
GregL
Guest
More runs, yeah and will need to improve his average to say, gee I dunno, 100 PLUS. Mate no one will ever come even close to the DON.
Sean
Guest
definatley not. but its good to see spofforth remembered. A certainty on my greatest ever aussie team.
Sean
Guest
good xi, but still a joke.