0Best England XI of the last 20 years

Reg­u­lar read­ers of my wit­ter­ings will know that Test Crick­et holds sway for me. It’s what makes crick­et great.

So the Cham­pi­ons Trophy cur­rently being played in Eng­land has got me thinking…what is the best XI for Eng­land in recent times?

The first ques­tion, of course, is how do you define ‘recent’? Well for the pur­poses of this art­icle I have decided on the debut test of middle order left handed bats­man Gra­ham Thorpe.

Thorpe made his debut in the drawn third Ashes test of 1993 held between 1 and 6 July. Thorpe made a ton on debut. Good lad.

So, to take his team mates for that test:

The Eng­land open­ers for that test were Mark Lath­well and Mike Ather­ton. Lath­well only ended up play­ing two tests so can be eas­ily put to one side. I will revis­it ‘Ath­ers’ later.

The middle order was made up of Robin Smith, wick­et-keep­er bats­man Alec Stew­ar as well as Gra­ham Gooch, Thorpe and lastly Nas­s­er Hussain.

Robin Smith and Gra­ham Gooch were bril­liant play­ers but were com­ing to the end of their careers in this test so I’ve left them out. Thorpe, Nas­s­er and Stew­art make the short­l­ist. All three were excel­lent ser­vants for their coun­try, scor­ing in excess of 25,000 test runs between them. Great effort.

Fast medi­um pace bowl­er Andy Cad­dick who took 234 wick­ets for Eng­land led the attack. He has to be considered.

But the oth­er three bowl­ing spots were occu­pied by Mark Ilott, Peter Such and Mar­tin McCague and they only played 19 tests between them.

So out of Thorpe’s debut test we have a short­l­ist of Ather­ton, Stew­art, Hus­sain, Thorpe and Caddick.

Mov­ing for­ward and bats­men to con­sider are, in the open­ing pos­i­tion, Andrew Stauss, Mar­cus Trescothick, Michael Vaughan, cur­rent cap­tain Alastair Cook and Mark Butcher. I’m con­sid­er­ing Stew­art as a middle order keeper/batsman. It’s a dif­fi­cult choice – six qual­ity bats­men but only two places. I think Cook has to be in there. He is pure qual­ity and has delivered the goods time and time again for Eng­land and seems to rev­el in the role as cap­tain. The one remain­ing spot goes to Michael Vaughan. He was an incred­ibly classy play­er and brings a use­ful back up spin option to the side. He is also my cap­tain. Very hard on Tresco, Strauss and Butch but tough decisions needed!

In the middle order I have four spots avail­able. My options? Well, Thorpe, Hus­sain and Stew­art are already short lis­ted. Add into the mix Kev­in Pieterson, Paul Colling­wood, Jonath­an Trott, Ian Bell and Mark Ramprakash (only kid­ding) and I have some very dif­fi­cult choices to make. Thorpe has to be in there for me. I’m a massive fan. Kev­in Pieterson needs to be in there too – when on song there is no one bet­ter. I’m going to plumb for Trott as my anchor of the innings so one more spot.…I’m going to go for Alec Stew­art. Just.  Hus­sain and Colling­wood were very gutsy play­ers with Colling­wood present­ing a use­ful backup bowl­ing option. He was also a word-class field­er. Ian Bell may have scored nearly 6,000 test match runs but I’ve nev­er been 100% con­vinced he fully belongs. Stew­art ulti­mately gets the nod because he can keep wick­et, free­ing up anoth­er bowl­ing position.

So that means no place for Mat­tie Pri­or in the middle-order. That was an incred­ibly close call – there is so little to choose between Stew­art and Pri­or – both destruct­ive bats­men, both good keep­ers. On anoth­er day Pri­or could have eas­ily got the nod.

So then we turn to the all-rounder’s spot. That goes to Andrew ‘Fred­die’ Flintoff. No dis­cus­sion needed. He would have made it in as a bowl­er even if he couldn’t bat. But by good­ness could he bat as well when hit­ting bemused Aus­sies to all-corners of the ground. Mar­vel­lous stuff.

Because I have Stew­art as my keeper/batsmen I have room for five bowl­ers (includ­ing Fred). I’m going for a four-pronged pace attack and a spin option. Fred has first spot. Cad­ddick has already been short­l­is­ted so those being added to that are Dar­ren ‘Dazzler’ Gough, Ashes her­oes Mat­thew Hog­gard, Simon Jones and Steve Harmis­on and then the cur­rent crop of quicks Jimmy Ander­son and Stu­art Broad. Domin­ic Cork can per­haps count him­self unlucky not to make the shortlist.

Gough­ie should be in there. A great bowl­er and a genu­ine char­ac­ter, he could bat a little bit too.

His one-time York­shire team-mate Mat­thew Hog­gard gets a spot too. Per­haps it’s a little bit of my York­shire bias shin­ing through. But there’s an old say­ing in Eng­lish crick­et – when York­shire are strong, Eng­land are strong.

One more spot and that goes to Jimmy. His sheer weight of wick­ets gets him in.

As for the spin option – there can only be one bowl­er surely? Graeme Swann is in there head and shoulders above all oth­er con­tenders (Monty and Ash­ley Giles).

And my 12^th man? Has to be super-sub Gary Pratt of course. Sorry Mr Pont­ing – I couldn’t resist!