The selection is of the players I found most exciting and would want to represent me (in the form of Richie Benaud's XI selected in 2001) while also retaining the balance required to succeed.
I have decided not to limit my selection to 4 internationals due to the constraints this would put on picking batsmen where the Indian players did not excel and most innings were held up by international batsmen.
- A. Gilchrist (c)(wk)
- S. Tendulkar
- A.B. De Villiers
- T.M. Dilshan
- J.P. Duminy
- D. Bravo (all)
- I. Pathan (all)
- D. Vettori (all)
- A. Kumble
- R.P. Singh
- S.L. Malinga
- Gilchrist gets in ahead of Hayden based on his innings in the semi-final which I consider to be one of the best I have seen in any form of the game. I thought Tendulkar would provide a reliable foil to his aggression.
- De Villiers, Dilshan and Duminy were the most consisent batsmen of the tournament and guided their sides middle overs with skill.
- Bravo and Pathan were the best allrounders and Vettori is selected to make the point that he should have played more often than he did (although he wasn't given the chance to perform, as a NZ supporter, I am quite aware of his consisent skills in any form of the game)
- Kumble provides wrist spin to Vettori's finger spin and showed great experience throughout. Singh gets in on stats and Malinga made batting so uncomfortable that he makes a fine variation to the bowling attack.
Please post your comments here as I may have made mistakes or forgotton some unfortunate player
Join me next Thursday for another XI
To be perfectly honest, Baz, I think not limiting yourself to 4 internationals is being lazy. Yes, you are going to get a better XI by including them, but by ignoring the selction policies of the tournament it is like naming an all time greatest NZ team and including a bunch of Aussies
ReplyDeleteThere were a number of Indian batsmen that wouldn't look out of place in this team, such as:
Suresh Raina - for the tournament he was the fourth highest run scorer, and also scored a 98 from 55 balls
Manish Pandey - scored a brilliant 114* from 73 balls, and finished with the highest average of the tournament (tho this was helped by only playing 5 games and having 2 not outs)
Dinesh Karthik - while he didn't do anything amazing, he was still solid enough for Dehli
Selecting Vetorri just to make a point is ridiculous. This is meant to be an IPL XI, and he wasn't even considered good enough to make the Delhi XI
Considering you chose to ignore the international cap, I fail to see how Hayden missed out considering he was top run scorer, had one of the best averages, and was very dominent at the top of the Chennai batting order. Even if you were limited to 4, he should have been in there
I also thought Nehra was brilliant for Delhi. In a team limited to 4 internationals, it would have been close between him and Malinga, but in a no limit team, he should not have been ignored
I look forward to your thoughts
Dan