World Test Team

About 10 days ago Michael Atherton, Ramiz Raja and Shane Warne were tasked with selecting a current Test Squad of 12 designed to win in any conditions.

They pre-decided that they would select two openers, 3 middle order batsmen, an all rounder, 3 seamers, 2 spinners and the best keeper available (they eventually ignored this one). The team they came up with was:

Cook
Warner
Root
Smith
Kohli (c)
de Villiers
Stokes
Ashwin
Starc
Anderson
Morkel


The most debate centred around the 3 middle order batters, with Williamson in and out of the selection and Amla also considered. At one point they even considered playing one out of position at opener, but eventually fudged it all by including 4 of the 5 they realy wanted featuring ABV at keeper. The slow bowlers pretty much picked themself (though Herath got a mention) and they were very quick to nominate Anderson and Starc as the opening bowlers. Steyn was discounted due to lack of form and fitness and they felt Morkel would shine coming in at first change. The paucity of all-rounders available saw Stokes as the first name on their list - but it is hard to view him as worthy just yet. Mitchell Marsh (!!!!!) and Shakib were mentioned with the Bangladesh player ruled out as they felt the team would need the seam option when they played two spinners and just two front line seamers.

Looking at the world rankings, as good an objective view as any, we would get the following lineup:

Openers: Cook and Warner
Batters: Smith, Root, Williamson (with Amla, Younus, Voges & ABV in contention - Kohli some way back behind Rahane, Taylor, Misbah, Mathews, Bairstow and Asad)
All-Rounder: Ashwin (with Shakib then Moeen in contention)
Spinners: Ashwin and Shah
Seamers: Anderson, Steyn, Broad (with Starc, Boult and Hazlewood in contention)


Who would you pick?

Personally I would leave out Stokes as I feel an all-rounder should be worth his place in the team in one of the disciplines.

Thus my team:

Cook
Warner
Williamson
Root
Smith
Sarfraz
Ashwin
Starc
Broad
Yasir
Anderson

12th & 13th Men: Amla, Shakib

Taking current form and all condition team as deciding factors.... following would be my pick...

Cook
Warner--replace with amla as opener..solid and secure even if you put him to open
Root
Smith
Kohli (c)---relace with williamson and Cook can captain
de Villiers+
Stokes--replace with angelo matthews
Ashwin
Starc
Anderson...replace with Rabada
Morkel....replace with Wahab riaz

I'd go

David Warner
Alastair Cook
Kane Williamson
Younis Khan
AB de Villiers
Shakib Al-Hasan
BJ Watling
Ravi Ashwin
Dale Steyn
Morne Morkel
James Anderson

Watling's the best pure keeper in Test cricket at the moment and he's a very decent batter too. Feel it's too early for Starc, this Sri Lanka series is the first in which he's consistently bowled well; he doesn't really have a stock ball and is erratic bowling to left-handers.

In contention for me:

Murali Vijay, Hashim Amla, Steve Smith, Joe Root, Ajinkya Rahane, Angelo Matthews, Sarfraz Ahmed, Rangana Herath, Yasir Shah, Stuart Broad.

The batting generally looks stronger than the bowling for me