CMJ's Top 100 (mainly English) cricketers

Christopher Martin-Jenkins relinquished the chief cricket correspondent's throne at The Times to Mike Atherton a year ago, and he has been a busy little anorak in the interim. In December, he was made an MBE in the Queen's New Year's honours list, telling Patrick Kidd: 

"It has been a great privilege to go round the world writing about cricket. The older one gets, the requirement for England to win becomes less important than the needs of the game as a whole... One concern for me is the contraction of cricket coverage towards the England team alone. We should not forget the county game and the grass roots, without which you couldn't have an England team. Nor should we overlook the fascination of the world game generally."

This month, his book - The Top 100 Cricketers of All Time - was published and the PR in its wake proclaims it as follows:

"Placing them in order of precedence, he has analysed each of them, assessing their characters, the cricketing elements that made them so outstanding and the special qualities that enabled them to be pre-eminent in their time." 

Not quite sure how this particular publication sits in relation to that plea to look after the county game: not only does it focus on past and present members of the England team (rather than first-class players), it is also heavily biased toward Old Blighty's great cricketers rather than those from elsewhere around the world.

Given Martin-Jenkins's pedigree of (a) writing eloquently for The Times and (b) muttering away magnificently on Test Match Special for a staggering 35 years (famously relaying the news that Daniel Vettori had kept "his rod down" at Lord's last year), there should be no surprise that blind patriotism and Anglophilia shines through.

CMJ's podium finishers are predictable - Bradman at number one, and English legend W G Grace in the silver medal position, ahead of Sir Garfield Sobers. The bearded Englishman is one slot too high for mine - he should be behind, rather than ahead of the great West Indian knight.

Overall, there are 34 English players in his top 100, 24 Australians, 15 West Indians, while India claims eight, Pakistan and South Africa six apiece, Sri Lanka a quartet, and Andy Flower flies the Zimbabwean flag solo. One slightly dyslexic Australian put it succinctly in a comment left on The Times website: "With all the English players making the top 100, you would think that they should of won more games." Great call Waz from Mission Beach, Queensland.

Among his century of cricketers, the man known as CMJ holds a place in his cricketing heart for New Zealand - but it is a very, very small place. Just two Kiwis make the list: Sir Richard Hadlee at #25, and Martin Donnelly at #73, wedged there in between Super Cat at #72 and The Wall at #74. Martin Crowe, Glenn Turner, John R Reid, Shane Bond, Daniel Vettori and Bert Sutcliffe would probably make some decent arguments in their favour if they headed to the Old Bailey to argue for inclusion.

Following on from CMJ's slightly dodgy angling theme above, Squib Donnelly (who was also a very keen fisherman) is an intriguing selection, but only for the fact he is hugely underrated in his home country. Given he was going around in the 1930s and 1940s, and his career was very brief at international level, it is perhaps no surprise that his cricketing abilities are not celebrated as often and as loudly as they should be. Described by some as the greatest left-hand batsman and point fielder ever seen, Donnelly's most discussed achievement was probably compiling New Zealand's inaugural Test double ton (206 at Lord's) to force a draw at the spiritual home of cricket, a watershed moment for our nation's cricketing credibility.