BBC's Greatest ODI Side

First topic message reminder :

A few Cricketing 'experts' at the BBC have chosen their greatest ever one day XI's. We, if we like, have to pick a side from the players they have picked.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/30983202

No Kohli, Bond, Flintoff, Pollock?

To me some of these players are great in the test arena, but not so much in the one day equivalent. Botham, Marshall, Sehwag, S Waugh come to mind.

From the pool of players to select from, mine would be.

Amla
Tendulkar
Ponting
Richards
De-Villiers
Dhoni
Imran
Akram
Garner
Muralitharan
McGrath

My alternate team to take on this lot:

Amla
Sangakara (Wk)
Ponting
Clive Lloyd (capt)
Inzi
bevan
Imran khan
Waquar
Ambrose
Garner
murali

Ambrose strike rate is 41 and an econ of 3.48 not too shabby.

Inzi and Ponting? There's bound to be a run out :-)

I still can't get over Gilchrist at 6. He played c.280 ODIs, with 260 of them opening. So on no evidence he can bat there in the finishers role alongside Kallis (also zero evidence he can bat there) If you want a WK at 6 it has to be Dhoni.

These things should NEVER be left to the general public!

Actually the public has come up with a team which is probably about 70% sensible, which is not that bad when you consider that (insert arbitrarily large number here) of people are pretty much daft...

Gayle is a very strange one, the rest are all understandable (I doubt most of the people voting have a clue who Garner was for example) to a greater or lesser extent.

djkbrown2001 wrote:My alternate team to take on this lot:

Amla
Sangakara (Wk)
Ponting
Clive Lloyd (capt)
Inzi
bevan
Imran khan
Waquar
Ambrose
Garner
murali

Two complete teams and not an England player between them

Shows how unremittingly mediocre we've been at ODI cricket over the years

Dummy. BOTHAM just missed out.was a toss up between Botham and Imran khan.

djkbrown2001 wrote:Dummy.  BOTHAM just missed out.was a toss up between Botham and Imran khan.

Have a look at their relative ODI stats - for all Botham should have been an outstanding one day international player, he didn't really deliver (unlike in Tests). I'd actually have gone for Kluesner in preference, as for a few years he was absurdly destructive as a #7 or #8 batsman and more than held his own as a bowler.

KP would have been close, if he had kept up his early scoring feats. England have had some good ODI players over the years, but no great ones.

some bizarre choices, as already pointed out. Don't mind Brett Lee, his record in ODIs is tremendous. I wouldn't have picked him, but don't think his presence is completely unjustified.

Gayle bothers me. His ODI record strikes me as very good rather than great: for me neither his strike rate nor his average justify being considered really, and certainly not being picked. I know you can't go purely on stats but still... Would have had all the other opening options ahead of him.

Obviously as pointed out the balance is also completely wrong: you only have De Villiers in there who's used to coming in at n°5 or lower, all the others are top 4/3 players. I don't mind picking De Villiers, Lara and Viv, that's a great trio for 3-4-5, but then you need a finisher as keeper, and another one as the all-rounder.

Kallis, fine fine player though he was, probably isn't quite there when considering an ODI all-time XI: you have better options in the top order, and don't lose much by having Imran Khan (for instance) at 7 rather than a specialist batsman.

The seam bowlers are just about OK, wouldn't have picked those three personally, but you can see the argument. Warne probably isn't the best ODI spinner of all time, but he does have (as Mike mentioned) those stand-out performances on the big stage, so is justifiable.

For what it's worth, my team would have looked something like:
Amla
Gilchrist (wk)
Ponting (capt)
Richards. these two pretty much interchangeable in the order TBH, Lara very very unlucky to miss out, but the two guys have performed on the biggest stage of all...
De Villiers
Dhoni - just edges out Bevan in the finishers role
Imran Khan
Pollock - his ability with the bat nudges out McGrath for me
Wasim Akram
Garner
Murali

I know I'm biased, but that does strike me as a better, far more balanced team than the one picked by the general public

No Sachin?

nope

Simply put I want Gilchrist's explosiveness at the top of the order (and like Mike want him for his keeping, Dhoni isn't good enough there for a world XI IMO), and Amla's ODI record is so good he simply has to play. My feeling is that Tendulkar's outstanding ODI stats are more about longeveity, and wouldn't be massively surprised to see him overtaken eventually (maybe even by someone like Kohli, who will probably also feature in this discussion in a few years)

I didn't pick Kallis... but he averages 44 with the bat, and 32 with the ball. He wasn't just a good ODI player, he was absurdly good. Can't in a million Sundays try knock 11500 runs and 270 wickets. Certainly can't accept him not being at the very least in the reckoning. Klusener bests him though.

I reckon Trescothick would have at least got a mention if he'd carried on playing ODI cricket. I wouldn't pick him in my team, but his record matches up well to a Jayasuriya or Gilchrist, especially when you consider he was opening the batting in England a lot of the time. Comfortably England's best ever ODI bat for me.

Trescothick 37.37 @ 85.21 (12 hundreds, 1 every 10.17 innings)
Gilchrist 35.89 @ 96.94 (16 hundreds, 1 every 17.44 innnings)
Jayasuriya 32.36 @ 91.20 (28 hundreds, 1 every 15.46 innings)

funnily enough, when thinking about Gayle and whether he really deserved to be in that list I was wondering which other openers you could have ahead of him and Tresco did pop up in my mind. I was too lazy to research his stats so glad someone has done so for me

His stats actually match up very well to Gayle's: similar (slightly higher) SR and again slightly higher average. Considering he played in an era where scoring was slower his SR would conceivably be higher today.

Gilchrist and Jayasuriya both have SRs which are quite a bit higher, even if they didn't hit hundreds as frequently. They also have two strings to their bow (keeping for Gilly, bowling for Jaya), and to my mind rank fairly comfortably ahead of Tresco (though had the latter played say double the amount of ODIs he did with a similar record he'd probably have deserved a mention in this debate).

To Raf, when I said I discard Kallis from consideration for my world XI, it's more along the lines that if you pick him he has to bat three or four, and for me Ponting Lara and Richards are all fairly comfortably ahead of him there. Obviously his bowling is a nice bonus, but don't think personally it's enough to get him on a level with those three.

looks like someone imposed on the 11 .......only one player could have played before the millennium of 2000

Richards, maybe, especially if you bump up for cross generation improvements (I've never actually bought this argument... but whatevs). Ponting and Lara though, not so much. Both average two or three runs less, don't have a bowling component to speak of (while Kallis until about 2009 was a reasonable first change bowler, and a very good one before injury forced him to remodel his action in 2002-04). Lara and Ponting both scored faster, sure, but that in and of itself isn't a qualifier, and Kallis' last five years would have been with a strike rate of 80ish, maybe slightly less. Where he loses is that he does not have the big game performances they have, but he was man of the series in the ICC tournament we ever won. For me, he is the greater cricketer of the three. At worst only slightly less of a batsman, but an infinitely better bowler, especially at his pomp, when he could touch 90mph, even in ODI's. I just picked Lara because I preferred him

Neither Lara or Kallis deserve a place in the middle order, imo. Punter and Sir Viv were better one day players. Kallis who despite being a great bat, took to much time to be considered for this team. Lara was and still is the best test batsman I've seen, but didn't always carry that over to the odi stuff in quite the same manner. Mike Hussey is arguably a better bet. This leaves AB at five.

Tendulkar
Jayasuriya
Ponting
Richards
de Villiers
Dhoni
Imran
Akram
Garner
Waqar
Muralitharan

Tendulkar, Richards and Akram pick themselves.
Sanath Jayasuriya has been a trend setter in ODIs. Besides, his bowling was more than handy in the limited overs in particular.
Virat Kohli and Hashim Amla can give Ponting a run for his place, but I wouldn't quite put them in there as yet, though they both are pretty close to selection in an 11 like this one.......
AB is a pure genius, the best of his era as an all-round batsman and has to be simply in there.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Michael Bevan and Mike Hussey are the best ever finishers the game has seen. Since its a middle order wicketkeeping position we are discussing, Dhoni walks in, Gilchrist doesn't come into the frame, might have been a different story up front or if AB is asked to keep wickets too.
Imran balances both bits of the all-round package better than Kallis, and had the flexibility to bat different positions.
Waqar at times was even better than Akram as an ODI bowler, and his ODI record is absolutely stunning.
Garner's record in ODIs is fabulous, and I've read some terrific things about him.......
The choice between Murali and Warne would always be one of the most difficult ones, but I just go for Murali's better overall record.......

And we should not forget that the likes of Tendulkar, Jayasuriya, Richards and Ponting played most or all of their cricket during a period where the bowlers had a job more than just turning up and traveling around the park.......

They also played a lot or all of their cricket in an era where only 1 or 2 players were expected to field and the rest were there to politely applaud or wait their turn to bowl.

A few points.

1. I'd pick Jayasuria over Amla every single time, I couldn't give a toss about averages really but I know who I would rely on most in a big game.

2. Cannot and never will consider Murali anything other than a cheat so would pick the legitimate Warne over him every time too.

3. Bevan has to be included, the greatest finisher in history and at a time when the bowling in one day cricket was actually better and less experimental.