The all-time alphabetical XIs

Actually, a similar cultural practice existed in medieval times in countries like England and Germany. Any time you meet a German person with the name ‘von’ in between their given name and family or surname you can be certain that he or she is descended from aristocracy. The only example I can think of regarding anyone I have ever encountered was a student of mine about ten years ago – her name was Courtney von Boehm. ‘von’ (small v) means ‘of’ or ‘from’ in German, and in medieval times people of the aristocracy got their names according to the name of the town where their castle stood. So in my example, one of her (Courtney’s) ancestors was the local lord inhabiting a castle near a town called ‘Boehm’ and let’s pretend his name was Reinhard, then Reinhard von Boehm would mean ‘Reinhardt of/from the castle near Boehm’. In medieval England, commoners got their surname from three main sources: their father’s name (Jackson, Johnson i.e Bill Jackson simply meant Bill who is Jack’s son), where they came from (Bristol, London etc) or what they did for a living (Blacksmith, Baker, Builder, Farmer etc).

And back to the cricket … Zaheer Abbas did open in at least one innings – his second test match in which he scored 274, but, as you say, he spent most of his test career at number 5, and in one day cricket he went in at 3 given he was his team’s premier stroke playing batsman.

A bit of non-cricketing trivia Dave J, Zaheer is not necessarily a surname, nor Saeed as with your earlier example with Saeed Anwar. It’s very likely that Syed Zaheer Abbas Kirmani are all given names, as could easily be the case with Saeed Anwar and also the large majority, if not all Pakistani people, never mind their cricketers. It is similar in large parts of Indonesia. My wife comes from the western-central part of Sumatra and her name on her Indonesian passport and all Australian documents, such as drivers licence is Meri Noviati, and our daughter is Gebi Novilantari, but none of those four names are surnames, as the concept of surname is by and large a western cultural thing. Meri Noviati are both given names, as are Gebi and Novilantari just like ‘Bernard Terrence’ which are my two given names. My wife is not Mrs McConville, as in her Minangkabau people, women do not take their husband’s name when marrying, although the Javanese, the largest ethnic group in the country do. My wife has a clan name ‘Si Panjang’ which is an identification with descendancy traced through the mother’s line but that name is not part of anyone’s actual name in public or every day life. I would imagine large parts of a country like Pakistan have a similar cultural practice, whether tracing ancestry through the mother or father’s line. While Meri Noviati is her every day name on all legal documents, there are two exceptions and that is her birth certificate and her marriage certificate. On these she is identified as ‘Meri Noviati binti Alinur’. Binti is an Arabic word and means daughter or daughter of, depending on the context and Alinur is her father’s given names – actual two separate names joined together ‘Ali’ and ‘Nur’ … Ali in Arabic means family and ‘Nur’ means light so her father’s name literally means ‘the light of the family’. So Meri Noviati binti Alinur simply means Meri Noviati, daughter of Alinur and this is the common Muslim practice for identifying a person on those two important life documents (birth and marriage certificates) – for boys it is ‘ibn’ instead of binti, and not ‘bin’ as per the ignorant western media – for want of a better example, ‘Osama ibn Laden’ literally means ‘Osama son of Laden’. A final example is Yousuf Yohanna, who changed his name to Mohammad Yusuf in 2005 when he became a Muslim – neither Mohammad nor Yusuf are surnames, they are both names of prophets in Islamic teachings, ‘Yusuf’ is the Arabic equivalent of ‘Joseph’ (great grandson of Abraham or ‘Ibrahim’ in Arabic), one of many prophets that both Islam and Christianity recognise. I do not know what the status of the name ‘Yohanna’ was for him when he still belonged to the 5% Christian minority in his own country, Pakistan, but I would hazard a guess that it also was not a surname, as it (Yohanna) does sound rather like ‘Johannes’ a common German/Dutch name of centuries ago, for example the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler. Anyway, I hope you find all that interesting.

Enjoyed the article btw. It's a fascinating exercise, because you can distribute the names across the alphabet however you like. For example, you could use just the front half, or back half, and still end up with a brilliant team: a-m: Anwar, Boycott, Bradman, Chappell, Dravid, Flower wk, Kallis, Khan (Imran), Lindwall, Marshall, Murali. n-z: Ponsford, Ponting, Sangakkara, Smith (Steve), Sobers, Stewart wk, Vaas, Vettori, Walsh, Warne, Younis. Obviously Ponting's out of position, but otherwise a good side.

Test: First Name: Alistair Cook, Arthur Morris, Don Bradman, Garfield Sobers, Jaques Kallis, Keith Miller, Kumar Sangakkara wk, Malcolm Marshall, Muttiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne, Wasim Akram Last Name: Anwar S, Boycott G, Bradman D, Dravid R, Hammond W, Kallis J, Khan I, Knott A wk, Lillee D, Warne S, Younis W ODI: First Name: Aaron Finch, Brian Lara, Dean Jones, Eoin Morgan, Mahendra Singh Dhoni wk, Michael Bevan, Rashid Khan, Richard Hadlee, Shaun Pollock, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram Last Name: Amla H, Anwar S, Clarke M, De Villers AB, Dhoni MS wk, Hussey M, Klusener L, Lee B, Pollock S, Starc M, Warne S I know the tail is often batting in a strange order, but I'm not too bothered by that- with so many great batsmen, they'll hardly get a hit anyway.

This is a bit of fun, but now you need to do the reverse alphabet to give the Curtley Ambroses of this world a chance!

Yes Anwar, is your man, though Pakistanis treat the Saeed as the surname in the stats books.

Good to see another fantasy eleven, we hadn’t seen some for a while on the Roar. This is one of the more eccentric concepts, but good fun. I can’t get my head around what my lineup would be, but can only offer a couple of nitpicking suggestions as below – three Aussie Bills and a Bob were better Test openers than Chris Gayle for me, while Boycott or South Africa’s Eddie Barlow (averaged 46 and a handy bowler as well) would rank ahead of Boonie. And definitely Wally Hammond at no. 4 in the lasties with Damien Martyn missing out. To really pick a nit, Zaheer was considered his surname as with a few Pakistanis, full name was Syed Zaheer Abbas Kirmani – more importantly, wasn’t an opener, almost always at 3 or 5.

Surely there are two or three Bills (Ponsford, Lawry and Woodfull) and a Bob who were better Test openers than Gayle. And Boycott over Boon in the surnames.

Who is Luke Taylor???

Does Bill Lawry qualify as a Bill or a William?

I can't think of who in the Lasties ODI XI would be the 5th bowler. The only one I'm aware of that rolls his arm over is Kohli but I can't imagine he'd be good for a full 10 overs. Surely Chris Tavare is at #3 for the ODI Firsties team :) Boycott could replace either Boon or Abbas in the Lasties Test XI as a genuine opener. Probably Abbas as he was more of a middle order player I believe. Good effort though and certainyl one that's got me thinking. Cheers.

Yeah Hutton might be a struggle. I would get Sobers into my team batting at 4 or 5 if it meant I could have him. Anyway its all a bit of fun. Good stuff.

You could easily bat Sobers at 4 and drop Hash. In which case you could also probably drop a quick and William O’Reilly!