The Cricketer Magazine – June 2018

Pooh always liked a little something at 11 o’clock

in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit

getting out the plates and mugs, and when Rabbit

said “Honey or condensed milk with your bread?”

He was so excited he said “Both.”

Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne

Ian Chappell tells a tale in this year’s Wisden India

Almanack. Keith Miller, long retired, is watching cricket

on television. A commentator, reading a list of stats,

remarks: “And there he is, Sir Donald Bradman, greatest

cricketer of all time.” Chappell continues: “Despite his

age and his ailments Miller leapt from the couch and

shouted: “Greatest batsman of all time: Bradman.

Greatest cricketer of all time: Garry Sobers.”

That was because Sobers did both – and did both to

excess. Dave Liverman wrote on ESPNcricinfo: “As a

batsman he was great, as a bowler merely superb.”

There is a case for saying that any list of the

greatest cricketers of all time should be restricted

to allrounders: to those who have attempted to master

every facet of the game: to those who, like tennis players,

need to play every single ball. To those who did both.

The list of all-time great allrounders has a force that

no list of mere specialists can quite touch: Sobers and

Miller of course, along with Jacques Kallis, Kapil Dev,

Imran Khan – a list we can stretch to include bowling

allrounders like Richard Hadlee and Shaun Pollock.

And then England’s own. You want trouble? Just fi nd

an England allrounder: Tony Greig, Ian Botham, Andrew

Flintoff, Ben Stokes... An allrounder is never off duty:

always ready to bat like thunder or bowl a spell of

devastation... or throw the next punch (allegedly) or sink

the next pint or merely revolutionise the entire game.

There’s a streak of madness in all the great allrounders.

They seem, like the White Queen in Alice, to be capable

of believing six impossible things before breakfast...

and then they make them happen. Sometimes. They are

possessed by a lunatic optimism: blind to physical

realities and the evidence of history. When India were

Kings

of the

impossible

Mad, bad and blind to overwhelming odds... Simon Barnes recalls the great

allrounders, and contends that wicketkeeper/batsmen are the new breed

RIGHT
Kallis, Kapil,
Hadlee, Imran
and Greig

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