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Shane Warne's list of greatest cricketers
1 Sachin Tendulkar 2 Brian Lara 3 Curtly Ambrose 4 Allan Border 5 Glenn McGrath 6 Wasim Akram 7 Muttiah Muralitharan 8 Ricky Ponting 9 Mark Taylor 10 Ian Healy 11 Courtney Walsh 12 Mark Waugh 13 Anil Kumble 14 Rahul Dravid 15 Graham Gooch 16 Andrew Flintoff 17 Matthew Hayden 18 Merv Hughes 19 Aravinda de Silva 20 Adam Gilchrist 21 David Boon 22 Martin Crowe 23 Stephen Fleming 24 Brett Lee 25 Darren Lehmann 26 Steve Waugh 27 Jacques Kallis/ Shaun Pollock 28 Saeed Anwar/ Mohammad Yousuf 29 Shoaib Akhtar/ Craig McDermott 30 Kevin Pietersen 31 Tim May 32 Robin Smith 33 Allan Donald 34 Bruce Reid 35 Michael Vaughan 36 Andy Flower 37 Stephen Harmison 38 Sanath Jayasuriya 39 Stuart MacGill 40 Kapil Dev 41 Justin Langer 42 Ravi Shastri 43 Michael Atherton 44 Alec Stewart 45 Waqar Younis 46 Dilip Vengsarkar 47 Chris Cairns 48 Brian McMillan 49 Darren Berry 50 Jamie Siddons
anyone see some gaping holes. want to offer up something a bit better from what you've seen?
Quote:
# Does Warne have too much respect for batsmen? His top two are Tendulkar and Brian Lara. Yet Glenn McGrath, who is 4th, has won more matches than either.
# Merv Hughes is 18th, about 50 places too high. Hughes was a totem and a trouper, but also a bit of a trundler.
# Wasim Akram is 6th, Waqar Younis 45th. Akram was the better bowler in their dotage, but in the early 90s, Waqar was dynamite. You might put him 10 to 15 places behind Wasim (who could also bat), but not 40.
# Brett Lee is 24th, above both Shaun Pollock (27th) and Allan Donald (33rd). Lee is great when the force is with him, but for consistency, economy and sheer class, Pollock and Donald are way ahead.
# Warne acknowledges three of the best batsmen-keepers, Gilchrist (20th on his list, Test average 48), Andy Flower (36th, average as a keeper 53) and Alec Stewart (44th, average as a keeper 34). But two others are nowhere to be seen. With Mahendra Singh Dhoni, it's probably because he hasn't played many Tests yet (20, average 36). With Kumar Sangakkara (48 Tests as keeper, average 42), there is no such get-out. Has Warne forgotten him, or is he not a fan of his educated style?
# Warne includes 20 Aussies, which sounds a lot. But he finds no room for the silky skills of Damien Martyn, or, more criminally, for two one-day finishers - Michael Bevan (the best ever) and Mike Hussey (also very good, and a Test match-winner too). Nor is there any sign of Dean Jones, who, along with Javed Miandad, practically invented one-day middle-overs batting. The places given to Tim May, Darren Berry and Jamie Siddons should have gone to these three.
# Warne is not unkind to the English, finding room for eight of his Ashes opponents. But not too many England fans would recognise them as the eight best players of the last 15 years. Graham Gooch is top of the Poms at 15th, followed by Andrew Flintoff (16th), Kevin Pietersen (30th), Robin Smith (32nd), Michael Vaughan (35th), Steve Harmison (37th), Mike Atherton (43rd) and Alec Stewart (44th). Warne shows respect to all the England captains he faced, except one of the best, Nasser Hussain. He also favours Anglo-South Africans - although South Africans who stay in South Africa go down less well (no Jonty Rhodes, Makhaya Ntini, or Herschelle Gibbs; perhaps their mistake was not to join Hampshire). Most strikingly, he can't find room for Graham Thorpe, a better Ashes cricketer than Atherton or Stewart, or for Darren Gough, who took 74 Ashes wickets at 30 - a record Harmison would love to have.
# Warne has always been decisive, and with the West Indians he has faced, he decides that they are either geniuses (Lara 2nd, Ambrose 3rd, Walsh 11th) or non-entities - no other player gets a look-in. To some extent this reflects West Indies' fortunes, but Ian Bishop, Richie Richardson and Shiv Chanderpaul all deserve better.
# Warne is funny about Indians. He lionises Sachin Tendulkar (1st) and pays his respects to Anil Kumble (13th) and Rahul Dravid (14th). But then he forgets about India for some time, and when he does remember, it's all ancient history - Kapil Dev (40th), Ravi Shastri (42nd) and Dilip Vengsarkar (46th). If Shastri is there for the double-hundred he made against the young Warne, that is surely outshone by VVS Laxman's 281, probably the best innings ever by an Indian. And Harbhajan Singh may feel like consulting his lawyers: he has 56 wickets at 24 against Australia, a far better record than Warne has against India. In the end, this exercise, like Warne's whole career, is all about Warne himself. As a piece of selection, it's surprisingly flawed. As a self-portrait, it's fascinating.
of course I haven't seen all the greats etc, but no mention of botham or richard hadlee, but steve harmison? also, no james anderson?
seems like it is, yeah. seems like unless they played some form of domestic cricket against each other, botham and hadlee would've missed warne by about 1 series. so never mind there.
<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre"> Mat Inns NO Runs HS Ave 100 50 Ct St First-class 153 231 33 4273 166* 21.58 4 11 552 51 List A 89 67 21 825 64* 17.93 0 2 108 29</pre> Alan KnottNot in the list
Darren Berry played with Warne at State level, and he may have been very good in his first few seasons, but surely a man with 95 test caps, over 4000 test runs, and more than double the amount of first class catches and stumpings than Berry, deserves a place in this list.
And I will now find out that this is a list that somehow excludes certain players thus making this post quite pointless.
<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre"> Mat Inns NO Runs HS Ave 100 50 Ct St First-class 153 231 33 4273 166* 21.58 4 11 552 51 List A 89 67 21 825 64* 17.93 0 2 108 29</pre> Alan KnottNot in the list
Darren Berry played with Warne at State level, and he may have been very good in his first few seasons, but surely a man with 95 test caps, over 4000 test runs, and more than double the amount of first class catches and stumpings than Berry, deserves a place in this list.
And I will now find out that this is a list that somehow excludes certain players thus making this post quite pointless.
I'm not sure that it was stipulated that the players he picks had to be ones he had played with or against, but he seems to have used that as a selection criteria, which is fair enough.
Cricket Discussion - Warne's list 
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