Gower - David Gowers 50 greatest cricketers of all time

DAVID

GOWERS

50 GREATEST CRICKETERS
OF ALL TIME

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

TIMPSON

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DAVID

GOWERS

50 GREATEST CRICKETERS OF ALL TIME

DAVID GOWER

Published in the UK in 2015 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

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ISBN: 9781906850883

Text copyright 2015 David Gower

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Images courtesy of the Press Association

Typeset and designed by Simmons Pugh

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

D avid Gower made his mark on the game through the 15 years of his international career from the late 1970s onwards as an elegant and at times prolific left-handed batsman. His finest year came in 1985 when he captained England to victory in the Ashes and in the process set a new record for the most runs in a home Ashes series for an England captain. Sadly not every series as captain reaped quite the same success and he is still waiting for the scars to heal after leading England through two 50 defeats at the hands of the all-powerful West Indies teams of the mid-1980s.

Davids second career as a broadcaster with, in order, Channel Nine, the BBC and Sky Sports has seen him establish himself as a calm and measured judge of the game. It is with those qualities to the fore that he has turned his mind to picking his 50 all-time greats.

INTRODUCTION

N o one said this was going to be easy. There again, nobody said it was going to be as hard as it turned out to be either. Picking just 50 to be my greatest ever has had me twisting and turning this way and that and not surprisingly the final order (if it really is the final order) was only achieved after numerous revisions, including the late promotion of Kumar Sangakkara after his 11th Test double hundred came just as I was poised to submit the first official draft of this book.

To be blunt, this is the sort of pub quiz-style discussion that I would normally avoid. One of my many failings is that I hate to admit that I am wrong and a list like this will inevitably have you screaming at me, How on earth can you have put A, B or C above/below X, Y and Z?. There will be names that are not even in my list that might be instant selections on yours. That is just how these things work and is all part of the fun, promoting fervent discussion, passionate arguments and agreements to disagree but hopefully no violence!

I must have had some criteria in mind at the start of the process, although whim and whimsy also played a major part. This might be a game that loves statistics but it is also a game that must rise above those mere facts and figures, and in any case how does one reconcile mere averages across over a hundred years of a constantly evolving sport, one which now sees three clearly different codes in use with Test cricket, one-day internationals and T20? I have no idea how I would have coped with T20 cricket, let alone having to imagine how WG might have played it! Apart from the expansion of those so-called codes, the laws have changed; pitches, equipment, techniques, fitness levels everything has evolved.

As such, I have tended to give greater weight to what all these extraordinary men have done in what I still like to refer to as proper cricket, Test cricket, while at the same time acknowledging the very real and important skills required over 50 overs and 20 overs hence, for instance, the inclusion of some of the current stars across all three formats, AB de Villiers (another who was granted further promotion, on the back of his record-breaking ODI hundred at the Wanderers in January 2015) probably the most versatile of all.

There are a number of players from my own era of whom I have first-hand experience either as colleagues or opponents, knowledge which, I have to say, made it no easier to happily put them into any order. For instance, I am often asked who was the best, fastest or toughest bowler I ever faced and I quite enjoy giving different answers every time. Well, it keeps me amused anyway but the underlying point is that one could revise this whole list on a daily basis and never really be right and never really be wrong.

There are those from the current era, some of whom have benefited from the amount of international cricket played today to put thousands of extra runs and hundreds of extra wickets into the record books. One admires both their skill and their determination to play on none more so than Sachin Tendulkar, against whom I played what seems like several decades ago.

When it comes to those great players from the more distant past, I have obviously had to rely entirely on other sources. Two of the great journalists of my time, John Woodcock and Christopher Martin-Jenkins, have both compiled their own lists in relatively recent times and both know or knew infinitely more than I about some of these great icons of cricket. Their judgements, other historical sources and, to give credit where it is absolutely due, Simon Wilde, with whom I have collaborated on this project, were all invaluable in helping to assess the merits of men long since dead but whose reputations remain very much alive and whose inclusion in this list was incontrovertible.

I also wondered about knocking The Don off his long-established perch at number 1. Could I, just maybe, put my boyhood hero, Garry Sobers, above Bradman? Garry is my all-rounder to beat all all-rounders try saying that quickly and often! who managed to combine a love of playing the game with a love of life in general and a reluctance to head for bed too early that would be challenged only by my long-time friend and colleague in England teams and now the Sky commentary box and studio, Ian Botham. But Bradmans achievements and the story of how he practised his way to the top, beginning with a stump for a bat and a golf ball against the water tank deep in country Australia, could only confirm him as the greatest of all time.

As for the rest, what separates them is probably no more than a decimal point, or in athletics terms no more than the odd hundredth or even thousandth of a second. Please enjoy this book for what it is: a tribute to some absolutely brilliant players, with apologies to those that remain just on the outside and there are more than a few with excellent claims who will just have to stay on the outside until the next man comes up with his own list of all-time favourites!

I hope there will be amiable discussion to follow, especially when Sir Ian finds out I have placed his arch-rival, Imran Khan, just ahead of him. On that one all I can say is that captaincy swung it for Pakistans greatest ever cricketer and that the ability to appreciate the finest vintages of Vega Sicilia did not come into it!