A 1960s Dream XI

This article is the first in a series that goes down nostalgia lane by drawing up a list of the dream XI in each decade since the 1960s. Any such team is likely to stir up a debate since it involves tough choices on whom to include and to leave out. The 1960s saw the emergence of the West Indies as a true cricketing power and apartheid South Africa also assembled first rate talent. So who would be in this team?

Criteria

It is important to remember that in the 1960s there were no neutral umpires and the officials tended to favor the home side. There is famous story that Sunil Gavaskar tells in his autobiography Sunny Days about the biased umpiring in New Zealand. The Indian team had got so frustrated by the performance of the officials, Gavaskar recounted, that after Bhagwat Chandrashekhar had a batsman caught behind the umpire said he was caught and Chandrashekhar replied, “yes, but is he out?”

Further, the hallmark of both batsmen and bowlers remains their ability to bat and bowl in foreign conditions. Players are comfortable with the conditions in their homeland but less so abroad. So one should look at their international record to gauge their abilities. With these criteria in mind the team is drawn up.

Openers

In the 1960s there were four openers who could have qualified for this team: Geoff Boycott, Bobby Simpson, Conrad Hunte, and Eddie Barlow. Boycott was an obdurate opener who was difficult to get out but he was boring to watch and quite the selfish player — in fact he was once dropped from the test team for slow batting. As one contemporary described him, he fell in love with himself at a young age and never got over it. While he scored centuries, it is hard to remember a memorable one.

In contrast Hunte was a stroke player and was one of the rocks on whom the great West Indian team of that era was built. Internationally, his record was not as good as in the West Indies with his best performance being 700 odd runs against England in 10 tests with 471 runs in the 1963 series. In other countries, his batting did not consistently dominate the opposition.

Bobby Simpson was the anchor of the Australian side as it transitioned from the players of the 1950s to the 1960s and he was also a useful leg spinner who took 71 wickets and in 62 tests with fivers in an innings. He also crossed fifty in 37 test innings. He scored heavily in both England and the West Indies getting a triple century in the former and a double century in the latter. In three tests in India, he had an average of 48 while in Pakistan he had an impressive average of 134.

Eddie Barlow, thanks to apartheid, had his career cut short at the age of thirty and was excluded from testing his abilities against the West Indies, India, and Pakistan by his country’s racist policies. Against Australia, New Zealand, and England, however, he had a good record with bat and ball.

So the openers would be Bobby Simpson and Eddie Barlow.

Middle Order

Based on their records, the first three are automatic picks: Rohan Kanhai, Graeme Pollock, and Garry Sobers. Kanhai was an attacking batsman who could tear apart an attack and did so in every country in the world. Even in the twilight of his career he scored a valuable 50 to help West Indies win the inaugural World Cup against an Australian team which had Lillie and Thomson in in it.

Graeme Pollock is the automatic two down with an average of over 60 in 26 tests. A left hander who some reckon was as good as Garry Sobers, Pollock was feared by bowlers in all countries he played in. Another player to have his career short by apartheid, even in his late thirties he was scoring heavily in an unofficial test series against the rebel West Indian attack of Sylvester Clarke and Franklin Stephenson.

Garry Sobers was the greatest cricketer to play the game. Yes, Bradman had the 99.94 average but Sobers could bat, bowl, field, and captain. As a batsman he crossed 500 runs in a series six times and on two occasions that was abroad (he also scored 497 in a five-test series in Australia). On three occasions Sobers took 20 wickets in a series and in England, in 1966, he took 20 wickets and scored 722 runs! A feat that is unlikely to be matched. Sobers could bat anywhere in the order having opened for the West Indies and batted as low as number seven.

As a batsman Sobers was ease against both pace and spin. He faced Trueman, Mckenzie, Snow, and Lillie and scored heavily against them. In eight tests in India against spinners of the quality of Vinoo Mankad, Subhas Gupte, Prasanna, Bedi, and Chandrasekhar he scored 899 runs at an average of 99 with 3 centuries and 5 fifties — he also took 24 wickets. No one before or since has matched Sobers’s versatility.

Four down is a surprise choice and that is Ted Dexter. Lord Ted, as he was known, was an attacking batsman who was exceptional at playing pace as he demonstrated when he took apart a pace attack of Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith who were both in their prime. He was also a useful bowler who, before he got hurt in a freak accident, took 60 plus test wickets with his medium pace bowling.

The wicket keeper is an automatic selection. When it drew up its team of the 20th century, Wisden named Alan Knott as the wicket keeper and no one argued with the choice. Knott was a phenomenal keeper who could stand at the wicket to the slow medium bowling of Derek Underwood. He was equally comfortable keeping to pace bowlers and showed himself to be a handy batsman against the pace of Lillie and Thomson and later batted well against Holding and Roberts.

Bowlers

Sobers gave the team an added dimension with a bowler who could bowl pace and spin. Barlow was an effective medium pacer while Simpson took five in an innings on two occasions with his spin. But the four specialist bowlers would be two pacers and two spinners. The first pacer is Freddie Trueman who took 179 wickets in 38 tests between 1960 and 1965. Trueman was fast, hostile, with a terrific outswinger, and he ended his career with 307 wickets in 67 tests at an average of 21.58!

Partnering Trueman would be Wesley Hall. Between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s, Hall was the fastest bowler in the world renowned for bowling long spells unchanged. Along with Charlie Griffith he formed a hostile partnership and that made the West Indies the best team in the world at that point of time.

The two spinners would be the Australian Richie Benaud and Erapally Prasanna. Benaud was a remarkable leg-spinner who in 8 tests in India took 52 wickets (with five 5 in an innings and one 10 wickets in a match) at an average of 18.38 — so much for the claim that Indian batsmen are always comfortable playing spin. In Pakistan, in three tests, he took 11 wickets at an average of 27 while in the West Indies, in five tests, he took 18 wickets at an average of 26.94. In five tests in South Africa, he took 30 wickets at an average of 21.94. For a leg-spinner, who tend to be costly, these figures were remarkable and Benaud was successful in every nation he played in. Benaud also got three centuries and 9 fifties in his career but he was in all fairness a bowling all-rounder.

Prasanna is widely regarded as the best off-spinner of his generation. Lance Gibbs was a worthy competitor as would Jim Laker have been if his career had not ended prematurely in 1960. But as Bobby Simpson and Ian Chappell, who both played against him, pointed out no one could spin the bowl as hard as Prasanna. He made the ball literally hum as it was flighted towards the wicket. He was successful in both Australia and New Zealand and unlike Gibbs or spinners from other countries he did not have a pace attack to help him put pressure on the opposition (Gibbs after all had Hall, Griffiths, and Sobers to put pressure on the opposition).

To sum up, the team would have eight batsmen, from Simpson to Benaud, and seven bowlers with over 50 wickets in test cricket — Hall, Simpson, Dexter, Sobers, Trueman, Benaud, and Prasanna — as well as the nagging medium pace of Barlow. As for the captain, despite my adoration for Sobers it would have to Benaud who never lost a test series. What a team!

(Amit Gupta is a Senior Fellow with the National Institute for Deterrence Studies USA. He has also written extensively on sports and politics. He is currently writing a book on the rise of the BCCI.)