Test cricket aggregates 1: England
Test cricket resumes at Lord's today after a two-month break for the ODI Champions Trophy. To mark this hiatus, I’ve taken some lists of test cricketers, ranked by aggregate career runs scored or wickets taken, and divided them into teams based mainly on the chronology of their career span, with adjustments to improve team balance where necessary. The reason for doing this is that I enjoy staring at these lists, and wanted to interpret them in some way. The result of doing it is, in my opinion, an interesting collection of names, numbers and notes, which helps to crystallise the progression of test cricket and its stars over the years.
First I did it with England, my country, my team. It started with a sudden determination to learn our top 50 test batsmen by career run aggregate. Then, based on the general balance of an XI, I learnt the top 30 bowlers by wickets taken. Four players appear on both lists: three genuine all-rounders and one durable, competent tail-ender who occasionally harboured middle-order ambitions. This leaves 76 individual players, including six wicket keepers. Adding the next unnamed keeper from the career dismissals list gives 77 men – seven teams.
*= Player features on eight-team world aggregates list.
Team 1: pre war
The top three are certified legends of the English game, the middle order less heralded, although Woolley, who's career spanned 25 years, and Leyland were our first great left-handers. All of them scored enough runs for today’s top 50 during an era of fewer test matches. Hammond and Woolley provide support bowling, while Ames and Tate can bat higher than their positions here. Throughout this project, with so many excellent specialists making the cut, some fine all-rounders merely strengthen the tail, while the occupant of number six is generally used to batting higher.
Barnes – pre both wars – was a statistical freak, with 189 wickets in just 27 tests at a sub-17 average. Verity is the first of five left-arm spinners on England's list, whereas there are no left-arm pacemen at all. Anyway, he was our first great spinner, but died a POW before Bedser, a latecomer who balances this team, could debut under Hammond’s post war captaincy.
A word on Wilfred Rhodes, right-hand bat, left-arm spinner. From 1899, over a career five years longer than Woolley’s – but six matches shorter - he amassed aggregates that place him 52nd on the batting list and 33rd among bowlers, with averages the right way round for a proper all-rounder. His omission is hence unfortunate, but we can console ourselves with the fact that he surely wouldn’t care, and is long since dead anyway.
Team 2: the 1950s
Four of the top six debuted pre war, but that team needed Bedser’s bowling. This was a successful era marked by consistency of selection, and all 11 played between ’52 and ’55, although never together, with Edrich and Bailey picked alternately as seaming and spinning all-rounders respectively.
Hutton is an all-time great but did his best work alongside the trusty Washbrook; likewise prolific quick Trueman and his lieutenant Statham. Laker – 19-90 at Old Trafford in ’56 – and dual sport star Compton wrote their own headlines; Graveney brings impeccable style to the middle order; May is one of our greatest ever captains.
Team 3: ‘60s to ‘70s
This selection has none of the neat overlap of its predecessor. How could it, when Tony Greig became the earliest of our four ‘aggregate all-rounders’ after just five years in the test arena. Before him, d’Oliveira had a similarly short but versatile career, but an entirely different relationship with South Africa…
Before Greig’s debut, three of this team had retired: Lock spun (left-arm) alone for a while after years as Laker’s apprentice; Barrington’s batting will live longer in the memory than Dexter’s; Cowdrey began before either but had one of the longest careers of all. Edrich & Amiss provide a rare left/right-handed opening partnership but are among the less evocative pairings among these lists; likewise Snow & Titmus with the ball, but Knott is England’s greatest ever gloveman.
Team 4: into the ‘80s
This is a curate’s egg of a team: six would feature in any discussion of an England all-time XI; the other five, with respect, would never warrant a mention. Randall was a crowd favourite and Dilley played his part in Botham’s Headingley test, but Taylor, Fletcher and Old ground their way onto this list despite relative limitations.
Linking the remote eras of Barrington and Atherton, Boycott or Gooch opened England’s batting for over 30 years, seven of them together, and along with the stylish, left-handed Gower, had three of the top four run aggregates until Cook and Pietersen intervened. Botham remains our greatest all-rounder and, along with Willis and Underwood (a third left-arm spinner), had three of the top four wicket aggregates before the advent of Anderson and Broad.
Team 5: the ‘90s nadir
As famously poor as results were in this watershed decade, there is much to commend many of these individuals. Lamb and Gatting perhaps retained their places only in the absence of viable alternatives - in the latter case, for 17 years, two as captain – but Atherton and Stewart’s parallel careers were frequently distinguished, yielding world list aggregates, while Smith was a very fine batsman mistreated by selectors.
Selector mistreatment is a caveat often attached to Hick’s career, but for such a talent to hold the lowest average of all specialist batsmen in the top 50 is a personal failure. At least he made the list: always uttered in the same breath for the same reasons, Mark Ramprakash lies 51st.
Aptly for a decade of near misses, the first two bowlers to miss selection, Dominic Cork and Devon Malcolm, are also on the fringes of this team. Of those selected, the later vintage, Gough and Caddick, are perhaps the best. De Freitas, remembered for his successful debut Ashes tour, will be tested batting at seven. Emburey’s tenure began a spinning drought that endured for over a decade more. Fraser, obdurate, unfortunate, epitomised a fruitless era.
Team 6: the ’05 Ashes
With six players from the historic 2-1 series win that reintroduced the English public to cricket (before it was snatched from free to air television), this team triggers happy memories. Captain Vaughan, whose 2,422 runs in 2002 remains the best year by any English batsman ever, and his explosive lieutenant Trescothick form an absurdly talented right/left-handed opening pair, while four of the five bowlers who skittled the Aussies are reunited: Flintoff’s all-round impact; Giles the left-arm spinner and lower order lynchpin; Hoggard’s guile and stamina; Harmison’s raw pace.
The bowling absentee is Simon Jones, whose reverse swing completed the Ashes picture but who never played after the fourth test, his career cruelled by injury. His compatriot and namesake Geraint also misses the list, ’05 undoubtedly his zenith. Instead this team has Prior behind the stumps; he and Collingwood, who replaced Simon Jones in that fifth Ashes test, share a later career vintage with three ’05 batsmen who will feature in Team 7.
Instead, the middle order brings us three stalwarts from another century, who surrendered the baton just before the days of open top bus tours and champagne receptions: Hussain, whose captaincy lifted the team from a culture of failure to a habit of success; Thorpe, England’s greatest non captain, exactly 100 tests of pure class; and Butcher, who held his own in such exalted company and can play the guitar. Those last two are also left-handed, giving this team a pleasant balance.
Team 7: up to date
The ’05 Ashes batting experience comes from Strauss, Bell and Pietersen, none of whom require introduction. Then come three careers cut short: Trott looked like he would bat forever, then stopped; Swann was England’s first really good spinner since Underwood; Panesar, the fifth and final left-armer, preceded Swann, made way, then partnered him to historic success in India.
Eight of these players brought the Ashes home from Australia in 2011 after a 24-year wait, along with Collingwood and Prior. Five of them will resume their test careers next month, of which three are batsmen: Cook, in an all left-handed partnership with Strauss here, is England’s only member of the 9, 10, and 11,000 runs clubs, and he’s not done yet; Root and Bairstow’s careers are in relative infancy, their potential mouthwatering.
After Greig, Botham and Flintoff, Broad is the fourth man to make both English lists. A left-handed batsman, he once scored 169 and looked like a genuine all-rounder in the making, but we’re lucky that he prioritised (right-arm) bowling and will soon pass Botham’s wicket tally of 383. In fact it’s his longevity that’s got him on the batting list. To play 100 tests and not make the top 50 you would have to be, well… Anderson, who debuted before even Strauss, and, fingers crossed, will patch his joints together a few more times and become the first Englishman to 500 wickets.
Next in line?
I’ll do this again in two years, during the 2019 world cup, by which time the players at the bottom of the top 50 and top 30 batting and bowling lists will almost certainly have been replaced and the teams reshuffled: Ames and Evans would find their way back into the reckoning as specialist keepers; Bill Edrich and Bailey, the ‘50s all-rounders, would cede their places to specialists; the ‘80s support bowling of Dilley and de Freitas would not be sorely missed.
As to the identity of potential newcomers, the two most likely are Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali, whose test statistics are strikingly similar at this point. In fact, there’s a decent chance that both players will make both lists, which would neatly accommodate those two extra keepers. Like Broad, Stokes and Ali both bat left-handed but bowl right-arm - spin in Ali's case. Clearly though, left-arm seam is frowned upon in England; no such practitioner has ever taken 100 test wickets.
Steven Finn needs just eight wickets to overhaul Bailey, but the mercurial paceman is quickly running out of chances to complete the job, and has been usurped by his county teammate Toby Roland-Jones for the South Africa series. Chris Woakes, further adrift than Finn at this point and unavailable against South Africa through injury, is nonetheless a more reliable long term prospect.
The most long term prospect of all, though, is young opener Haseeb Hameed; just three tests into his career, an imposing aggregate beckons. However, after a difficult start to the county championship, he hasn't been selected to open with Cook for the South Africa series. Nevertheless, like many of the best players, I believe he'll return better than ever, although 2019 will probably come too soon for him to make the top 50.