Greatest T20 XI from the pre-ODI era

Neville Cardus, the celebrated cricket writer, wrote of Ranjitsinhji, “When he batted, a strange light was seen for the first time on English fields, a light of the East. The leg glance was Ranji’s own stroke.“He is today a legend. We can feel the spell yet, we can go back in our minds to hot days in an England of forgotten peace and plenty, during which Ranji did not so much bat for us as enchant us in a way all of his own so that when at last he got out, we were as though suddenly awakened from a dream.”Ranjitsinhji's celebrated unorthodoxy emphasizes the fact that quite a few players in the olden days could have adapted successfully to T20 cricket. Think of a fantasy world XI comprising the best players from the pre-ODI era who could have played T20 cricket.Though Ranjitsinhji narrowly misses out, this team is made up of a handful of legends would have given any modern T20 outfit a run for their money.

#1 Victor Trumper

Victor Trumper bats for Australia in 1902

Often remembered as the most stylish batsman during the Golden Age of cricket, quite a few cricket historians rate Victor Trumper over the legendary Don Bradman. Trumper was at the zenith of his powers during the 1902 England tour. The rain kept coming down all summer, the wickets got soft and sticky, and batsmen kept getting out. But Trumper batted on.

Neville Cardus, who was only 12 at that time later wrote: “His cricket burns in my memory with the glow and fiery hazard of the actual occasion, the wonderful and all-consuming ignition. He was the most gallant and handsome batsman of them all.”

And that was not all. Trumper, whose batting has been repeatedly compared with poetry, could elicit the most sublime emotions from Cardus' pen. Cardus later wrote of him : “When Victor Trumper got out, the light seemed to die for a while from an Australian innings. ‘The eagle is gone and now crows and daws.’ ”

His versatility and his ability to play every shot in the book would have made him a great T20 batsman. Jack Hobbs lauded him for his unorthodoxy and called him the 'Champagne of Cricket'. Even CB Fry was full of admiration for him and said, “No matter how many runs Bradman makes, Vic Trumper’s name comes up time and again, and his great deeds are discussed. He took a hold on the hearts and minds of the people in England as no other batsman has done.”

#2 Vijay Merchant

Vijay Merchant in an India practice session

"Let us paint him white and take him with us to Australia as an opener," CB Fry once said about Vijay Merchant. The man who has a first-class batting average of 71.64 which is the second-highest after Don Bradman easily makes it to our team as the opener partnering Victor Trumper.

His short international career comprised two tours to England during which he amassed a mammoth 800 runs. Widely credited as the founder of the Bombay school of batsmanship, Merchant was immensely unlucky to lose the best years of his career to the Second World War.

Fiercely patriotic, legend has it that Merchant once dropped out of a tour to England as Mahatma Gandhi and a few other freedom fighters were in prison at that time. He re-wrote many records during his illustrious career but has sadly remained India's unsung cricketing hero in many ways.

#3 Sir Don Bradman (captain)

Don Bradman during his record-breaking innings at Lord’s in 1930

First there is Bradman and then come the rest. His Test batting average of 99.94 made Bradman the ultimate benchmark for any comparison. Very much a phenomenon to be wondered at, Bradman's eminence has made him perhaps the greatest sporting legend of the 20th century.

Bradman's Test average which is the greatest of all time is also the most recognisable number in Australian history. No wonder then that the national broadcaster, the ABC, even used it for its own post-office box. He was also perhaps the greatest destroyer of bowling that the game has seen.

"Every ball went exactly where I wanted it to go until the ball that got me out'' was Bradman's famous assertion. To watch him bat, as many would agree, was to watch the crowned king of cricket. It was not a difficult choice to make Bradman the captain of this incredibly talented XI.

#4 Charles Burgess Fry

A rare vintage photograph of CB Fry competing for Oxford University in the 'broad jump' event during the Inter-Varsity athletics meeting, etching a world record that would stand for 21 years

CB Fry's name could be a startling inclusion for many as he was the pioneer of classical, orthodox batsmanship. But T20 cricket has also shown us the need for a highly technically gifted batsman at times -- slam bang batting does not always pay off. Fry's monumental batting monograph entitled Batsmanship quite aptly captures his acumen for 'mechanism' and 'timing'. As Sir Neville Cardus wrote, Batsmanship "might conceivably have come from the pen of Aristotle, had Aristotle lived nowadays and played cricket".

A man of fascinating contradictions, he was prone to nervous breakdowns and had become an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler. He achieved first-class marks in Latin and Greek at Oxford, played football for England and in an FA Cup final for Southampton and equalled the world record in the long jump.

And as a batsman, he had scored over 30,000 first-class runs at the turn of the 20th century including 94 hundreds at an average of over 50 on uncovered pitches. Fry was a maverick who would easily walk into any team.

#5 WG Grace

WG Grace bowling for Lancashire in 1902

“To the public he was The Doctor, The Champion and WG, but to those who knew him best he was simply Gilbert.” So reads the blurb of Gilbert, the brilliant new novella by Charlie Connnelly which is an intimate portrait of WG Grace.

The book opens with the famous account of WG Grace having been dismissed off three consecutive deliveries by Charles Kortright. Grace had refused to walk even after being leg before and then caught behind. When he stood his ground after being bowled off the third delivery, Kortright quipped: “Surely you’re not leaving us, Doctor? There’s one stump still standing.” As Connelly imagines it: “Grace paused briefly as if he was about to turn and respond but instead marched off at a quickened pace, announcing to the waiting members as he strode up the steps that he had never been so insulted in his life.”

Though Grace has rather graciously volunteered to drop down the batting order in our team, it would have been a disgrace to leave out the grand old man who is considered by many to be the father of modern cricket. The man who played first-class for a record-equalling 44 seasons, the man whose sighting could hold up trains as porters abandoned their chores, and the man whose fame in England only stood next to the likes of William Gladstone and the Queen cannot be left out of any team.

WG being more than a handy bowler also makes it to the team as an all-rounder. Not to mention his prowess of hiding the ball in his beard to effect run-outs during crunch situations. And not to mention that he comes with the heavy burden of reputation: folklores galore when it comes to WG. GK Chesterton once famously said that Pickwick was the true English fairy and WG, the bulky sprite, was a prodigious Puck in a truly English midsummer day’s dream.

#6 Denis Compton

Denis Compton during a quick century for England against South Africa in 1947

In the four summers that followed in England after World War II and the two tours to Australia (1946-47) and South Africa (1948-49), Denis Compton scored 14,641 runs with 60 centuries in all first-class matches for Middlesex and England. In the 28 Tests during that period, he piled up 2664 runs with 11 hundreds.

Neville Cardus wrote of him: “The strain of long years of anxiety and affliction passed from all heads and shoulders at the sight of Compton in full sail, sending the ball here, there, and everywhere, each stroke a flick of delight, a propulsion of happy, sane, healthy life. There were no rations in an innings by Compton.” EW Swanton's analysis though lacking Cardus' poetic candour, was much more realistic: “What marked his batting from the first was a sense of enjoyment in it all, of risks taken and bowlers teased, that at once communicated itself to the crowd".

Compton was also an accomplished footballer who played at Arsenal for most of his career. Having scored more than a hundred centuries in first-class cricket, Compton, was considered to be one of the greatest of English batsmen. He was a more than useful slow left-arm chinaman bowler which makes him a vital inclusion in the side as an all-rounder.

#7 Sir Clyde Walcott (wicket-keeper)

An average of 56.68 proves Walcott was one of the first wicketkeeper batsmen

With Worrell and Weekes, Clyde Walcott is remembered as the three 'Ws' who dominated post-war West Indies cricket. His valiant 168 not out in the second innings at Lord's gave the West Indies their first ever Test win in 1950.

Having kept wickets in the early part of his career, Walcott also makes it to our team as the wicket-keeper. But his batting would have been good enough to ensure a place for him. At 6 feet 2 inches and weighing 15 stones, Walcott was strength personified. Anything over-pitched would be dispatched for thunderous cover drives. Legend has it that he once played such a venomous straight drive off Brian Statham at Sabina Park that the bowler could pick up the ball which had rebounded off the concrete base of the sight-screen as he walked back for his next delivery.

An average of 56.68 from the 44 international matches he played, as well as the 11,820 first-class runs he had scored makes Clyde Walcott an automatic choice for our team as a hard-hitting wicket-keeper batsman.

#8 Sir Garfield Sobers

Gary Sobers – the all-rounder in the truest sense

"Concentration's like a shower. You don't turn it on until you want to bathe. That was cricket for me." That's Garry Sobers for you. He could bowl pace, off-spin and leg-spin and doubled up as an extraordinary batsman. The first man to hit six sixes in an over, Sobers would have laughed his way into any T20 team solely on his batting abilities. An advocator of raw talent, Sobers famously said, "If you see kids with a lot of ability, don't coach them."

He was the master of unorthodoxy -- there's nothing that he could not do on a cricket field. "He could do anything [...] he is the most complete all-round cricketer I have ever seen," Richie Benaud had said about him. He finished his career with over 8000 runs and 235 wickets.

As the saying goes, if Bradman was the greatest batsman, Sobers was the greatest all-rounder of all time. And long before AB de Villiers appeared on the scene, Sobers was hailed as 'the only 360-degree player in the game ' by Barry Richards.

#9 Keith Miller

Keith Miller was one of the greatest Australian all-rounders

Widely remembered as the 'golden boy' of cricket, Keith Miller was a vital member of the record-breaking Invincibles in 1948. He is commonly believed to be the greatest all-rounder produced by Australia. Known as the 'Nugget', Miller who was a crowd favourite because of his charisma, could drive and cut the ball with power and panache as well as any.

He was capable of bowling fast and hostile spells forming a formidable partnership with Ray Lindwall -- a partnership that produced 243 wickets only to be bettered later by Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie. He was capable of producing devastating bursts which struck fear in the hearts of the most formidable batsmen. Miller who served as a Royal Australian Air Force Pilot during World War II was always more than a cricketer -- he embodied the idea that there was more to life than cricket.

#10 Harold Larwood

The feared Harold Larwood

It is the third Ashes Test during the 1932-33 series at the Adelaide Oval in front of a crowd of 50,962. A short delivery strikes the Australian batsman Bill Woodfull an agonising blow beneath his heart. As Woodfull bends over his bat in pain - which would become a defining image from that series - the crowd started manically hooting and abusing the English team. The journalist Dick Whitington would go on to call it "an unforgivable crime in Australian eyes and certainly no part of cricket" adding that "[Umpire George] Hele believes that had what followed occurred in Melbourne the crowd would have leapt the fence and belaboured the English captain, Larwood, and possibly the entire side". A nonchalant English skipper, Douglas Jardine had simply reacted by saying, "Well bowled, Harold." The bowler in question was Harold Larwood, the spearhead of the controversial bodyline tactic employed by the English.

The use of the controversial bodyline style is said to have brought a premature and acrimonious end to Larwood's international career. The tactic was widely criticised for being unsportsmanlike and in an age when batsmen hardly wore any protective gear, it caused a series of injuries. With his high front arm, textbook action and blistering pace, Larwood was the only bowler who is said to have troubled Bradman at times. It is said that Larwood's admiration for Bradman the batsman was matched only by his distaste for Bradman the person who criticised his tactics and accused him of throwing.

At a time when the world had not seen the likes of Bret Lee and Shoaib Akhtar, Harold Larwood defined the art of fast bowling for many. Jerky film footage shows Larwood racing to the end of his long run-up with his legs pumping like pistons. As Graeme Wisden famously describes his action: "The left arm is flung up, the torso cocks, and the right arm swings in a great, rapid arc from his calf and wheels over until his knuckles almost graze the ground in the follow-through". At the other end, a batsman would throw away his bat in pain. It was a sight to behold.

#11 Bill O\' Reilly

The Australian spinner Bill o’ Reilly

"It was a legbreak which was bowled at a fairly, good, solid pace, and it was bowled on his leg stump and hit the top of his off stump. There is a photograph of him stretched right out trying to play the ball, which means, of course, that I tricked him at the point of contact. It was not very often that you could get a bloke like Sutcliffe to move his feet wrongly". Thus Bill O'Reilly described the famous ball that bowled the great Herbert Sutcliffe during the bodyline series. If we call Warne's delivery that dismissed Mike Gatting the ball of the century, Bill O'Reilly's delivery to dismiss Sutcliffe has to be right up there.

Nicknamed the 'Tiger', O' Reilly was considered to be the best spinner to have played cricket before the likes of Warne and Muralitharan took the world by storm. He used his height and the two-fingered grip to great effect to deliver leg breaks, googlies and top spinners. Don Bradman considered him to be the best bowler he had ever faced. In his Farewell to Cricket, Bradman devoted a substantial section titled 'The Daddy of them all' to the bowling of Bill O' Reilly. His close friend and teammate Jack Fingleton described O' Reilly's action as 'a flurry of limbs, fire and steel-edged temper'.

Often described as one of the most volatile and hostile spinners to have played the game, Bill O' Reilly hated batsmen with a vengeance. Ian Peebles wrote about him: “Any scoring-stroke was greeted by a testy demand for the immediate return of the ball rather than a congratulatory word. Full well did he deserve his sobriquet of ‘Tiger’.”