Bird’s greatest all-time cricketing flock

Former Yorkshire opening batsman and one of the greatest umpires to don the white coat Dickie Bird turned 80 on Friday, still looking fit and well and it was great to read his greatest all-time Test Eleven. Here’s his greatest Test X1 – Garfield Sobers, Lance Gibbs,Barry Richards, Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Sunil Gavaskar, Alan Knott,Graeme Pollock, Vivian Richards, Shane Warne and Imran khan.It is an awesome side.

Every player was a master of his trade and the consensus is that, that is easily the best eleven that any mortal could ever pick.

The squad is balanced in all aspects and could beat any team going.Bird knows his onions. He stood in the middle for decades, watching every member of his team performing and he would not have had any difficulty of picking the eleven he finally did.

Performing a sacred duty

Bird as an umpire realised that he was performing a sacred duty. He watched, thought long and hard, watched the line of the ball where it pitched, and pondered whether the batsman was in line, before raising his dreaded finger. A cricketer’s future depends on the umpire.

The umpire could make or break the future of a cricketer. A wrong decision could mean curtains for a young and promising batsman. Bird studied all these aspects before ruling a batsman out.

And every cricketer who played in the Bird era,has nothing but the greatest honour, regard and respect for Bird.

Players never challenged his decisions because they trusted Bird.What made decision making easy for him was because he cultivated a good rapport with the cricketers. He would laugh and talk with them, share a joke or two, but once in the middle there was no nonsence with him.

Reluctant to name a captain

But what was intriguing was that Bird had been reluctant to name a captain in his greatest Test eleven. In the squad are many captains such as Sobers, Greg Chappell, Sunil Gavaskar, Richards and Khan.But there need be no splitting of hairs.

The man to lead this dream team without any doubt would be Garfield Sobers who Bird describes as the greatest that’s ever lived and who Bird reckons you’ll’ will never see another like him, not in your life time. Sobers could easily be tagged the god of cricket.

As a West Indian captain, he had no peer. He was never afraid to lose. That helped him be a gambler and many are the victories he brought his country with his daring leadership.The other captains in Bird’s squad are Greg Chappell, Sunil Gavaskar, Vivian Richards and Imran Khan.

But as a captain able to perform many aspects of the game, there was no way that Sobers could be overlooked to lead Bird’s Greatest all-time Test X1.

Laments the passing of those glory days

Bird laments the passing of the glory days, when decisions went unchallenged by ball-tracking technology.’ You can’t buy respect, you have to earn it.

And I can honestly tell you I had no problem with any professional cricketer’. In picking the Greatest Test X1, Bird has not given a thought to Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitheran who has 800 Test wickets in his career.

Obviously Bird does seem to think much about Muralitheran.For an off spinner Bird has gone for former West Indian spin wizard Lance Gibbs. Gibbs was a magician with the ball during his time. As for a leg spinner Bird did right in penciling the greatest spinner of all time, the sheik of tweak Shane Warne who bowled the most difficult art to bag over 700 Test scalps.Bird has not lost the passion for the game.

He still enjoys the game, watching the cricketers performing. Another Bird will not be born or seen again and we wish the loveable Bird many more years of enjoyable living.

Lankan cricketers a big flop in IPL

The whole lot of Sri Lankan cricketers playing in the lucrative Indian Premier League now gathering momentum in all cities where the games are played, have failed miserably. Other than for all rounder Thisara ‘Panda’ Perera, the big names such as Mahela Jayewardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Tillekeratne Dilshan, Sri Lanka’s new captain Angelo Mathews, Lasith Malinga and Jeevan Mendis have just been going through the motions. What is unacceptable is that Dilshan has been dropped and Sangakkara as captain of Sunrisers Hyderbad has been forced to drop himself for very poor form with the bat.

Not happy and contended

It was not a happy and contended set of Lankan cricketers who took wing for the IPL. Many demonstrations against the Sri Lankan cricketers were held and the consensus was that they should not have gone considering the situation. But the big money they were going to earn was too tempting to say no.

Threats were made that rotten eggs would be pelted at them on their return ad probably these threats must have unsettled them and so the flopping. It would be interesting to watch whether the franchises who are spending a lot of money on the Sri Lankan cricketers would want to have them for the next tournament.

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