South Africa’s All Time eleven

Richards

Barlow

AB de Villiers

Pollock

Dudley Nourse

Kallis

Lindsey

Proctor

Tayfield

Adcock

Donald

Who are your fast bowlers other than Donald?

Adcock, Mike.

Heard of him?

And Proctor Mike....ever heard of him.

Tayfield was the best spinner around 56 through 58. Rabada has been in an elevator going down...much to prove. Ock is a mess who can only bat against long hops.

Hell Dave your team has 5 bowlers...you can’t be serious. Dudley Nourse had the highest SA test average until Pollock came along....he was a giant in his day. 

Amla, Sean Pollock and Steyn are all worthy contenders. But I prefer  Nourse, Proctor and Adcock.

Both were medium-fast bowlers  with an average pace of  roundabout 135 kph.  

The reason for this was threefold Adcock, Heine and a great off-spinner named Hugh Tayfield. 

The curious action

Adcock ran in with an almost unbelievable action. Every step was taken with the toes pointing towards the batsman, including his delivery stride. According to Wisden, He bowls without interruption in the course of his run, swinging his arm on a trunk that is virtually upright like a sudden gust turning a light windmill. When he released the ball, a line joining the hand and foot would encroach onto his body. 

Graveney said, He was as near to being an arm bowler as anyone I have ever seen. For that elegant England batsman, the fact that such an action could deliver such ferocious pace remained a constant source of wonder. When he saw him bowl in England in 1955, Fred Trueman was amazed at how he could bowl out-swingers with an in-swing bowler s open-chested action.

The next Test at Johannesburg, however, announced his arrival on the dark wings of terror. Adcock charged in to produce one of the most dangerous opening spells in the history of cricket. 

In his first over, Geoff Rabone and Murray Chapple were struck by balls that flew from good length.At nine; Chapple was bowled off a ball that ricocheted off his chest. 

Sutcliffe walked in and played two deliveries from Adcock, before another flew for his head. He tried a desperate hook, but failed to make contact. The same could not be said about the ball. It struck him on the side of the head and according to Sutcliffe himself, he went out like a light. His ear was split, blood poured all over in a ghastly sight. He was carried off, and taken to a hospital where he fainted again twice. 

John Reid was the next man in and was pummelled by Adcock. Within a short span of time he was hit five times on the body. With the score on 24 for 3, Lawrie Miller was hit on the chest and was forced to retire and made for the hospital following the footsteps of Sutcliffe. 

Matt Poore scored 15 before Adcock made another one rise. The ball struck his ribcage and was deflected on to the stumps.

.]

Before the 1968 season began, I had my first news of Procter as a player, from David Green who had also just joined Gloucestershire, from Lancashire, and had batted against him in the nets and trials. "This man is extraordinary," David said. "He bowls at a hundred miles an hour from extra cover off the wrong foot." The two men were to become fast friends, though this did not prevent Procter giving him a fearful bouncer when they were playing against each other in Rhodesia. David went for the hook, missed, caught it with his head, and was laid out. Procter unperturbedly began his long walk back, throwing scarcely a glance over his shoulder, until about halfway through it came the casual query, You all right, Greeny?

As to bowling off the wrong foot, that is a matter difficult to define, but Procter's action, with its long run and the last-moment whip-through of the arm, was certainly an unusually testing one. It says much for his strength and stamina that he was able to keep it up for so long. He suffered strains and injuries but, looking back on his career, not much more than most really fast bowlers suffer.

Sure sounds like 135 ks....hey Tokkie you ignoramus. .

Look at video of Harold Larwood....still scarier than anything I have seen. Should be on you-tube. De Ock has never come through under pressure...Waite, the master of the late cut, and Dennis Linsey did so time and again.

Smarts decline through the generations....your grandfather was clearly the smartest man in the family.

Quintie is a better bat than Boucher was, in terms of eye for the ball. 

...but Boucher had better technique and could be relied on where Quintie can't.

So what's more valuable for a batting keeper? A ten run higher average or being able to get down and battle when the team needs it most?

Boucher has my vote for tests and in the shorter version I'd go with AB.

Saffex,

Better technique or better eye?

If you think he has a better technique, I'm all ears. Honestly, would like to know why you say so.

Post apartheid 11:

1. Smith
2. Kirsten
3. Amla
4. Kallis
   
5. Cullinan
6. de Villiers
7. de Kock
8. Pollock
   
9. Maharaj
10. Steyn
    
11. Donald

Notes:

Maharaj only selected to avoid an all right arm pace attack. But he hardly disappoints.

My team also doesn't take quotas in to account

Hard to only pick 11...

Ntini, Cronje, Gibbs, McMillan, du Plessis, Klusener, Boucher... all unlucky not to be in the 11.

I disagree Saffex.

He often plays with minimal foot movement while also not meeting the ball with his head. 

His good eye helps to hide that problem a touch but it's clear as day that he's playing around a technical problem that is, at this stage, cemented into his style.

Even when he's in form, that issue persists. It's also why he has a higher than average strike rate in tests. He flashes more.

And therefore why he can't be relied upon to bat for time...like Boucher could.

To me, a player, particularly a keeper, in a best 11, must have both the ability to front-run but also to dig in when the world is falling down around him. I can't remember when last Quintie did that. Can you? Boucher did that plenty. Proof is in the pudding.

Had Quintie a perfect technique as you suggest, this would not be the the case.

Like I said, Saffex - I'll trade that extra 5-10 points of batting average for a reliable fighter. All day.

Ock throws the bat at the ball, leaving a huge gap between bat and pad. He also has very high hands for balls well outside the off stump. My view is players fail under pressure because their technique is not inherently sound.

Ock has no faith in his ability to dig in and construct an innings. He knows his defence will let him down......so he tries to take charge. That works as long as the ball isn’t moving.

Mostly it is. Ock has never come through when he had a chance to change our fortunes....he has had his ‘great’ innings when the match was probably going to be won anyway.

Lindsey, Johnny Waite of the peerless technique, Boucher.....Ock.....in that order.

mozart your team gets my vote.

Waite and Lindsey were in a class of their own as batsman/keepers.

But  Smith, Kallis, Rice, Bland and Seymour are all worthy of a mention..

Sorry no place for the new young hopefuls of today.

AJ I would be happy to pick Smith, Rice and Bland. It’s sad that the world’s best cover fielder ever, Bland, can’t be picked. But can one leave out Nourse or AB to do so?

The batting depth in that  team is awesome....Proctor coming in at number 8, That only happens if you have great all rounders and we had three in that team....Kallis, Proctor and Barlow.

Speaking of Barlow, he wasn’t an all time talent. But he was an all time competitor. No single player did more to instill a belief that South Africa could beat England and Oz. Every other player was better when Barlow was in the team.

Ultimately I'd probably take AB as my keeper. Why not, right?

Saffex, de Kock doesn't like to move his feet. It's that simple. To get him out, you force him to decide between moving his feet and playing a bad shot...then the odds are always in your favour.

Here's a test were he scored 95. He is hitting it well but only appears to be moving his feet correctly when you bowl full and at his feet. His counter-punching role is not something he chooses, it' s basically all he can do.

Time stamp 00:25 

Watch where his feet are the rest of the time. Even when he moves them, it's not outward to meet the ball but rather straight ahead with his bat flashing far outside off. Looks good sometimes and makes a nice sound but isn't good technique.

Now, compare this to Boucher who has nowhere near the natural eye that Quintie does but would stay there to see out days and tough spells and/or allow Kallis and co to post big totals. 

Timestamp 02:39 - He actually makes two movements here to play a length ball through cover. 

"de Kock’s biggest issue is his head"

I agree.

It's never behind and over the ball 

You may be right - but their is another issue as well.   De Kock is likely to be totally demoralized by the shirt teams he has to captain and then getting the blame for the junk performances resulting from teams election.   He apparently lost interest in playing for SA and in local cricket.   If that be the case I think he gets my sympathy for the rubbish SA loads on him consistently,              

Quintie's dad adopted a young kid some time back. 

Poor chap has no cricketing aptitude but de Kock senior had him placed in a children's provincial side anyway. Because...reputation & influence.

He failed abysmally which was bad for him and the poor kid that got dropped to make a space for him. He won't be following in Quintie's footsteps since it was too much for him and he no longer wants to play cricket.

My nephew plays kids provincial cricket and it's actually pretty crazy to see how good some of the kids are. I shit you not when say that some of them are hitting double hundreds. They're not even ten years old yet.

There's also a little leg spinner that bowls his stock ball, which turns quite a lot, in a foot-mark size area four out of six times. He has three variations, including a wrong-un, flipper and a top spinner that climbs way more than it should. 

I was watching him bowl to some of the dad's recently...bamboozled is about the best word to describe the situation.

There's no lack of talent in SA. 

However, I do hope they all go and play in England and Oz...because screw quotas.

I hope he does take himself abroad, Saffex. 

All the better in English conditions and he'll get the recognition his talent deserves.  

The government put quotas in place but then do not create sufficient conditions where enough talented quota players come through. So you doom the poor sods that get a shot anyway because the pool they came through wasn't competitive enough. 

Perhaps that's a generalisation since enough good POC bowlers make it to the highest level and do well. But then, no great batsman started playing the game in his late teens, like some great bowlers did.

I think that rugby and bowling in cricket are, in some senses, more reliant on speed, stamina and physical ability while batting is more of a mental art. Of the two popular sports, I'd say tennis and cricket, particularly batting, are the most deeply reliant on wide muscle memory pools. Too wide to be picked up sufficiently for a professional standard after 16-17 years of age. 

The guys don't see cricket in primary school, then get to high school and perhaps take up the game in Grade 9 or 10. That's well behind the mark compared to the standard of the kids that played cricket for most of primary school. And it's not an issue that you can force. You simply have to make cricket available to black kids in primary schools across SA. 

Failing that, you cannot expect the late starters to stand shoulder to shoulder with their peers - certainly from a batting perspective.

 It's unfair and toxic to everyone involved.

If XP is the yardstick, Biff (one of the best gritty, hard nosed openers in the game ever) should replace Richards in that team...such a pity Barry only got to play a few tests...such a shame.