Fantasy Test XI - Players who made the very most of their ability.

Having re-read the bumped thread about unfulfilled talent and GB's final post, just starting a thread for us to compile a list of players who may not have had the talent of other guys but overcame that with determination and grit to really make the most of their innate ability.

My first two offerings are:

Sir Alastair Cook - England's leading test run scorer, highest scoring test opener yet a man whose main attribute was his ability to concentrate.
Paul Collingwood - Oft derided for his MBE, Collingwood for me dragged every ounce of ability he had onto the pitch every time he played. Only Englishman to captain England to a global title

I'd probably stick Tim Bresnan in there, not the greatest all rounder we've ever had but has a more than respectable record.

Bresnan is a very good shout.

I'd say Giles was never the most talented player but always seemed to apply himself well and never gave anything away. He could stick about with the bat and keep things tight with the ball and allow the pace bowlers to rotate. Doesn't have great stats, but was a key part of that 2005 Ashes win - I think he dismissed every Aussie player at least once as well which is a nice stat to have in a series like that.

I feel like adding Shiv Chanderpaul as you looked at him play and wonder how he ever scored so many runs.

Andy Flower always felt like a player who was better than his ability.

I'd add horrible but effective former New Zealand opener Mark Richardson to the list

How about Daniel Vettori?

Vettori is a good shout, a spinner who couldn't spin the ball and ended up with a reasonably good bowling average, add in being a very good lower order batsmen.

Could end up with a side loaded with New Zealanders, who seem to produce endless players that perform well above their ability. Chris Harris, another truly horrible cricketer who was pretty damn effective.

A current New Zealander in Neil Wagner definitely fits that bracket. As far as I can tell he just bowls bouncers at 82mph, yet he has 170 Test wickets at 28. No idea how he does it.

Good shout, how do they do it? I'm trying to branch out but keep coming back to New Zealand. What about that spell from Colin de Grandhomme in the World Cup final? On paper his bowling is awful but it nearly suffocated the life out of England

Vettori may not have been a big spinner of the ball but he was a damn good bowler. I'm not sure I'd classify him in this group. Mind you I wouldn't classify Cook as such either !
Collingwood seems very much the example I would use.

But I guess this is a very subjective decision - depends on one's own definition of "good" as well as view of the player concerned. Everyone will probably be able to put up examples other posters may think totally inappropriate ...

On holiday on a beach up the Amazon but will be working on this!!

Because we're about to see a 300+ chase at Headingley - Shai Hope.

I'd say Shai Hope is a Joe Denly level player who England made look like Bradman for a few weeks

Yeah, he wasn't great but he single handedly won a test that I believe tied the entire series? No idea what he's done since.

Yeah, he wasn't great but he single handedly won a test that I believe tied the entire series? No idea what he's done since tbh.

Hope's been shunted down to 6 for the first test against India, no real idea if that's permanent or not. He's managed two test tons in his career...both against England!

Both in that match as well! Test average of 28 and has played quite a lot of matches. Bang average Test player though fairly decent in ODIs.

As I made the suggestion for this thread in GB's unfulfilled talent thread, I'm going to add a couple of suggestions of players who undoubtedly had more talent than the likes of Collingwood, but still arguably over-achieved:

Shaun Pollock and Don Bradman.

Bradman is obvious - talent wise he admitted he wasn't the best in the Aussie team of the time but 'the others keep getting out'. Certainly he wasn't 2/3rd again better than the best of the rest batsmen of all time in terms of 'ability', but had a technique and application that was hugely effective.

Pollock: More based on my perception of seeing him play in England, and then of what his stats actually showed when we discussed him in our HoF thread. I always thought of him as a good bowler who batter a bit, sort of bowling average 30, batting average 20 player, but it was much closer to the other way round.

If we are looking for a genuinely fast opening bowler, how about Courtney Walsh? In ability terms I wouldn't place him anywhere near the top half dozen or so Windies pacemen, but his durability was remarkable.

Of course, Boycott is my shout for an opener spot. So good (as with Alistair Cook) at playing to his strengths and limitations.

Hi Dummy and all - with apologies for the delay, now following up on this.

I did actually consider Bradman when I saw Tiger's opening post although I don't think you can really categorise him as a player ''who may not have had the talent of other guys''. Certainly not with his record and average being head and shoulders above all others!

However, Bradman undoubtedly did have the determination and grit to make the most of his innate ability which was one of the things that Tiger was looking for. As a lad growing up, Bradman would regularly practice and improve his eye to ball coordination by throwing a golf ball against a wall and then playing it with a cricket stump.

Despite being such a superlative batsman - or perhaps one of the reasons why he was - he hit very few sixes in his career. This appears to have been a deliberate strategy. If he wasn't hitting the ball in the air, that was one way less for his opponents to get him out.

I'll put a few more names in the mix this week.

Reading through, maybe it's better to call it a "I don't understand how they're good, but they're good" team. Most players make the most of their ability, after all. But some like Giles and, maybe, Vettori are in that bracket of being watched and not really seeming that good, but obviously having forged successful international careers.

Or, to be more succinct, players who made the very most out of somewhat limited ability.

Ok, Dolph, tomorrow I'll go back before your time and give you one of my favourites - sometimes known as ''The bank clerk who went to war''.

Big promise to keep now, Guildford

guildfordbat wrote:Ok, Dolph, tomorrow I'll go back before your time and give you one of my favourites - sometimes known as ''The bank clerk who went to war''.

David Steele?

Hi Dolph and all again - the player I was referring to was David Steele, a relatively unknown and apparently ordinary batsman plucked out of the county game late in his career who shone like a star for two English summers against some truly great and fearsome fast bowlers before returning to the backwaters of the domestic game.

There's a lovely tribute to him from John Thicknesse on cricinfo which I reproduce below and which captures for me why he belongs here:
''David Steele was a comparative rarity at test level - a genuine selection-panel coup. A grey-haired middle-order batsman for Northants, he played in steel-rimmed spectacles and looked years older than his 33. He had Tony Greig to thank for his inclusion in Greig's first Test as captain, against Australia in 1975. Steele's England career lasted only eight matches and little more than a year, but in that time he became a national hero, averaging 42 against the best fast bowlers in world cricket. Steele based his defence on a firm, long-striding, forward stroke, and stood up to Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson , then to the fearsome West Indies pace quartet of 1976 (Roberts, Holding, Daniel, Holder). Far from showing fear, Steele appeared to revel in it. Yet until Greig plucked him out of county cricket, Steele had scored only 16 centuries in 12 seasons with an average of 31. Described by The Sun's Clive Taylor as ''The bank clerk who went to war,'' Steele scored 50 and 45 on his debut at Lord's after losing his way from the home dressing-room to the Long Room, and added 106 against West Indies at Trent Bridge. A well-liked and drily humorous Staffordshire man who was voted BBC's Sports Personality of the Year in 1975, Steele had another triumph: he persuaded a Northampton butcher to reward him in kind in his benefit season, and finished up with 1756 lamb chops - one for every run he scored. ''

Strange in some ways that he didn't play more Tests but England didn't go overseas in the winter of 1975/76 whilst the following year they went to India where it was thought that Steele would struggle against their spinners. His international career then ended with him not being picked for that tour or ever again.

Thicknesse rightly applauds Greig for Steele's Test debut. To Greig's credit, this wasn't just a hunch. He canvassed the opinions of county umpires in a quest for a batsman with the necessary dogged resolve.

By the way, not mentioned in such detail by Thicknesse, when Steele first went out to bat for England at Lord's, he went down a flight of stairs too many and ended up in the basement toilets!

Not as old as you gb, but old enough to remember David Steele, in part because the summer of 76 was the last time I watched cricket with my grandad.

That summer and the one before were pretty traumatic for England batters, with the selectors struggling to find players who could withstand the barrage from first Lillee and Thomson, followed by Roberts & Holding. IIRC Brian Close at mid 40s and John Edrich at about 40 were called up for that series and took an absolute battering on their bodies.

Dolphin Ziggler wrote:Reading through, maybe it's better to call it a "I don't understand how they're good, but they're good" team. Most players make the most of their ability, after all. But some like Giles and, maybe, Vettori are in that bracket of being watched and not really seeming that good, but obviously having forged successful international careers.

Or, to be more succinct, players who made the very most out of somewhat limited ability.

I'd argue that isn't true at all, there are countless players who don't make the most of their ability; Graeme Hick being an example from the 90's and James Vince of today, both players had every shot in the book, played beautifully but just couldn't/can't hack it at international level. Compare that to Nasser Hussein who had about two shots, was technically deficient in almost every way but forged a competent international career because he was fairly mentally strong, no one will ever say he was more talented than Hick or Ramprakash.

I’d suggest that’s an ability. But even then, most means a majority of, not all.

I was just trying to get a tighter criteria for it

LondonTiger wrote:Not as old as you gb, but old enough to remember David Steele, in part because the summer of 76 was the last time I watched cricket with my grandad.

That summer and the one before were pretty traumatic for England batters, with the selectors struggling to find players who could withstand the barrage from first Lillee and Thomson, followed by Roberts & Holding. IIRC Brian Close at mid 40s and John Edrich at about 40 were called up for that series and took an absolute battering on their bodies.

Tiger - yep, that's right. The series in '75 when England were up against Lillee and Thomson followed that summer's inaugural World Cup and consisted of only 4 Tests. Following the first in which we were hammered, Denness was sacked as skipper and replaced by Greig who, as I posted earlier, ensured Steele came into the side. More than aided by the efforts of the lookalike bank clerk, we did at least manage to draw the remaining three Tests.

We also held the West Indies in the first two of the 5 match series the next summer before losing each of the remaining Tests. Close and Edrich having been recalled used every bit of their skill, experience and (immense) bravery against Roberts and Holding - plus don't forget the less consistent but still ferocious Wayne Daniel - in the first three Tests but ultimately gave way. I'm sure the battering they took will be out there on YouTube. I had the pleasure of speaking to John Edrich about this a few years ago, albeit very briefly. I remember him commenting, ''They were fast.'' Whilst that added nothing, it still said eveything.

A few more from home and abroad who made the very most of their ability.

* Graham Gooch
Probably no England player has been more dedicated to fitness and practice to improve his game. This is confirmed in Derek Pringle's book, Pushing the Boundaries, an interesting and entertaining review of cricket in the 1980s even though long-held prejudices mean I can never really warm to the writer. Pringle played with and under Gooch for both England and Essex. Having acknowledged that Gooch's dedication had seen him ''become England's finest batsman'', Pringle tellingly writes, ''As the country's new captain, he sought to spread his work ethic to the team to see if it would rub off on others. For all those it benefitted, it rubbed an equal amount up the wrong way, including Gower, England's other world-class batsman of the time.'' I remember Mike Selig (much missed on these boards) turning Gooch down for our Hall of Fame for that reason.

* Ken Barrington
Slightly before my watching time but an absolute stalwart of the middle order of England and Surrey from the mid-1950s until his retirement due to heart trouble in the late '60s. Always a favourite of Corporal Humblebucket (also missed here in recent months) who enjoyed ''watching him on the radio''. Barrington was a complete stonewaller who would bat and bat. Although once dropped for slow play, 5 day Tests normally allowed him to do this at will and more than in 3 day CC matches (as they were then). That probably explains his very decent first class average of almost 46 being bettered by his England Test average of an incredible almost 59, exceeeded only by Herbert Sutcliffe [per cricinfo].

* Larry Gomes
One of my favourites from around Gooch's era. When the West Indies were dominating world cricket, they had not only a truly fearsome bowling attack but also a batting line up capable of cutting the opposition to ribbons. Batsmen of the dash and flair of Greenidge, Haynes, Richards and Lloyd. Gomes didn't have that destructive power but made its absence an asset by deliberately playing within himself and as a supporting act, stepping up to the big stage in the rare event of others failing. Not an all time great but an immensely valuable support to a team of many all time greats and that was perhaps more important.

* Andre Nel
I'm basing the South African's inclusion here on my watching him play for Surrey. He made a total nonsense of the common accusation that all Kolpaks are only here for the money. He put everything and more into his bowling and will to win. He was even said to have an alter ego called Gunther who took over from him when he walked onto the field!