The Angry Pirate wrote:Wright, in my opinion, is a throwback to the bad old days of the 90's, when we had an obsession of finding the next Ian Botham and we tried several, supposed, all rounders who were never fit to play Test cricket (Mark Ealham & Adam Hollioake being a couple who spring to mind).
Instead of this constant, usually unsuccessful, hunt for an all rounder, the selectors should instead be working on a policy of finding 5 batsman & a keeper who can actually compile 300-400 runs between them on a consistent basis. This would then leave the way open to actually have 5 potentially match winning bowlers, instead of carrying the all rounding makeweight.
True test all rounders are a rare thing...the problem is that during the 80's there was a situation where every side seemed to have one (Botham, Hadlee, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan) and this has led to the belief that the all rounding number 6 is a must....This belief must be stopped if we are to ever progress.
I agree great test match all-rounders off yesteryear seem to have all but gone. However, the days of your 9, 10 and 11 being just bowlers is also gone. Runs frequently come down the order these days from players that are not(for some reason) considered good enough to be all-rounders??
Daniel Vettori, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, our own Graeme Swann, Shane Warne, Mitchell Johnson, to name but a few. Even the likes of Jimmy Anderson seems to have picked up the knack of being difficult to get out and can hang around and frustrate.
England in particular have Stuart Broad, Jimmy Anderson, Graeme Swann, Adil Rashid, Liam Plunkett(potentially), Tim Bresnan that can all bat a bit. Granted we still have the Monty Panasars and Graham Onions of this world too but generally a lot more runs come down the order these days.
