Cricket-Match-Special ... A forum for discussion

pick an number 4, 5 and 6.

I would have had SRT, Azha and VVS, except I'm not going to pick someone who was banned so I'll have the excellent Vengsarkar at five. Feels a bit early for Kohli.

I've gone for Sachin, Azza and Laxman.

Used to love watching Azza bat.

Well, obviously Tendulkar is in, there after it is a little more competition. Viswanath was a fantastic player to watch, one of the greats in terms of making batting look effortless. Hazare and Umrigar where a little before my time which leaves it a toss up between Vengsarkar and VVS. Also team balance to consider as neither Kirmani or Engineer were the greatest of batsmen so it would leave a very long tail with Dev batting six but you can't get five bowlers in otherwise.

I'd plump for Tendulkar, Vengsarkar and Viswanath.

Need a vote to separate this. Otherwise I'll move from Vengsarkar to Viswanath to give us a third batter.

You might have to.

I was under the assumption that Azhuruddin's ban was over turned a few years back after some court found the original decision wasnt right.

I picked him.
Sachin obviosuly.
Ganguly

Out of the list of all those cricketers, only Sachin's name compares to Ganguly on pure talent. Ganguly was an exceptionally attractive batsman to watch. When he was on form he made everything look easy, and you bowled too wide to him and that was it.

Yet Ganguly sacrificed his career to lead Indian cricket to better things. I think a lot of people will forget how well he galvanised his team into a cohesive unit. Before Ganguly, India were pretty much a perennial underachiever squad with tonnes of individuals who were talented, but he installed belief in the culture of Indian cricket, and turned them into a winning team.

I think that took a lot out of him and he stopped working on his own game. Id hazard a guess his record as just a player is vastly different to his record as captain. And id personally rate him much higher of a natural talent than VVS

I guess Ganguly suffers because of the greats in the side around him that made a very respectable Test average look pretty poor. I was interested in your comment about the effect of the captaincy on his batting, 37.7 as skipper and 45 when not captaining, still not an earth shattering average. It's a bit like English fans in general not rating VVS because of his poor record in England.

That said, if it was all about natural talent wouldn't we be picking Kambli over Dravid at number 3?

Those voting for Dravid might as well change as he'll be in at three...