Very hard to argue with that team Econ. Agree McMillian would be a middle order option and I have always been a Vincent fan. I'm guessing Cairnsie retired a bit early to be a contender, but if you could include Max cricket, he'd be a handy inclusion.

Ugh. Even make-believe 20/20 XIs are boring. "Who can hit the ball really hard like?". "Who can bowl yorkers and slower balls?". There's your team.

Every time you make a game shorter you lose a dimension. For example, today I was able to (during a period of work-avoidance) make a test XI of "Immovable 21st Century Objects" (Richardson, Dravid, Chanderpaul, Kallis, Tillakaratne, Collingwood, Giles, Streak, Gillespie, Hoggard in case anyone cared at all).

Now you can't waste time with such quality about 20/20 can you? I guess maybe an "Off-the-Mark First Ball" XI might be fun. But nothing creates such joy in young and old alike as a nice 20-30 ball vigil while the batsmen 'gets a feel' for the pitch before edging one between 1st and 2nd slip for that cherished first run.

I've always enjoyed the "least deserving XIs", ie the guys who got an international cap where by rights they were lucky to be playing domestic cricket. Royden Hayes always leaps to mind. As does Greg "He's a legspinner....quick select him" Loveridge. But then again he blew to bits on the boundary without ever bowling a ball so it's a bit harsh to include him.

Strangely, Chris Martin is starting to resemble Roydon in appearance.

That is all.

Dr Z: Cairns bowling was economical enough at 6.5/over, but ironically his batting was a major albatross around his teammates' necks: he managed just 3 runs from 13 balls in his two matches. Don't have stats readily available for Max I'm afraid, but I'm sure if he'd played more matches and taken them more seriously his record would have been better.

Jacob: note this quote from the top of the post about my T20 sentiments: "T20 dross masquerading as cricket". I've only compiled this team out of a sense of duty for completeness.

very hard to argue with that team, definitely have the three spinners and it bats allll the way down to 10.

Only thing I probably would of disagreed with would be the part of saying Redmond (possibly for Taylor). I would rather Taylor than Guptill. but then again would prefer Guptill than Redmond ;)

Indeed you did Sir Economy. I can almost sense the pinched nose and look of mild disgust as you began the blog.

Another excellent time waster would be the "Totally Unsuitable for 20/20 XI". One can only wistfully imagine the immaculate forward defence that the opening combination of Sir Boycott and Sunil Gavaskar would produce. Bowlers would spend 17 bemused overs trying every combination of yorker, slower ball, bouncer, slow yorker, slow bounder, slower slower ball, and bouncing yorker to remove them, until Boycott purposefully runs out Gavaskar for 7 for scoring too quickly. But never fear! Mark Richardson will stride out manfully at number three to ensure that there is no panic.

I guess the fact we only have five years of numbers makes this one a bit more of a lottery than the proper forms of cricket. I am quite amazed by two things; firstly some of the names that have played for us i.e. Jeff Wilson, Paul Hitchcock and Ewen Thompson and secondly Skippy has played twice for us and has 0 runs from 5 balls.

Dr Z - Greg Loveridge actually broke his finger stopping a firmly struck shot hit back at him. He is now very high up in Robert Jones Investments and earning loats of money. Maybe he could be captain of the "Financially Secure XI" He could bowl in tandem with the Wellington bowler who ended up working on Wall St

Re Loveridge - he was in fact hit on the hand while batting. A great quote from his Cricinfo profile: "He didn't get a chance [to play test cricket] again, which might seem harsh, but not if you look at his first-class record."

Hope everyone's had a good Christmas and New Year...good to see the anorakism continues here even in the bizarre absence of any international cricket in this country in the middle of the summer.

HJust came across the statistical gem in an article on Cricinfo that looking at batsmen who have made 1500 runs and over in tests in the last three years, in this period Vettori has out-averaged Ricky Ponting (Ross Taylor has too). Brilliant.