The Magic Ticket

Shamelessly ripping off a column from today's Guardian, if you could chose to watch live any day's play in the history of cricket, which would it be?
Personally I'd go for something from the distant past. Grace scoring the first ever hundred before lunch in 1873 perhaps, or S.F. Barnes taking the new ball at Melbourne on 30th December 1911. Or Hobbs and Sutcliffe batting on a sticky wicket at the Oval on August 17th 1926, or Stan McCabe's 232 at Nottingham in 1938, or Bradman's 309 in a day at Headingly 1930.
So if you could watch live any days play, or any period of play, from the whole history of cricket, which would it be?

If my knowledge of who won could be expunged before hand, I would choose Day 4, Edgbaston in the 05 Ashes. I was abroad during that Test match so I never got to see it live and only read about it in the papers over the next days so I would love to be able to see that live without knowing the result.

If it was just for pure cricketing enjoyment, I would choose to see any of Hobbs and Sutcliffe's major partnerships together. As undoubtedly the best opening partnership in history, I would love to have seen them bat together. I am particularly fascinated by Sutcliffe as I think he gets overshadowed somewhat by Hobbs, and for a man averaging 60 in Tests to be overshadowed that is ridiculous. Hobbs must have been a hell of a player!

I would probably go back to my own early days and jet off to see any day of the South Africans walloping the Aussies in that '69 - '70 series. Arrrhhh - Barlow, the Pollocks, Procter, Lindsay, Goddard amongst others plus the world's greatest post war opening test batsman Richards.

Perhaps the first ever day of test cricket...

or lords first day 05 ashes.

MCG first day in '06 for Warnie's 700th... oh wait a sec I was there!

Would have loved to see Wes Hall bowl live. Any day with him bowling then Sobers batting would have been fine for me.

Any of Bradman's hundreds, but the 309 in a day must have been special.

Would have loved to see all the great South African's in action.

McCabe's hundred in the bodyline series when he hooked, pulled, upper-cut everything Larwood threw at him.

Aus-SA semi-final in the 99 WC I think that would have been fairly special. From Pollock and Donald's opening salvos, to S. Waugh and Bevan's recovery effort, then Donald cleaning up the tail. SA got off to a flyer before a certain SK Warne produced one of the all-time great spells. Then Kallis and Rhodes got the run chase back on track but Warne returned and snared Kallis. Pollock hit a few blows, Klusener was dropped at long-on and looked for all money like he would take SA over the line. Then the mix-up (a euphemism obv.).

The final day at Headingley in 1981 would be one of them what with Willis steaming in like a madman.

Eng v SA sf '92 - to see the iconic "SA need 22 runs to win off 1 ball" in real-life