I don't think there is much us and SA, two very evenly matched sides.

can you keep in oven gloves?

can you keep in oven gloves?

Best England XI that you have seen play:-

Boycott
Gooch
Vaughan
KP
Gower/Lamb - Probably Gower
Botham
Flintoff
Prior
Swann
Gough
Anderson

Four great seamers, Swann as spinner backed up by KP and MV. Bats down to 10 also.

That would be an entertaining side.

Michael Vaughan
Martyn Moxon
Anthony McGrath
Craig White
Adil Rashid
Richard Blakey
Tim Bresnan
Ajmal Shazhad
Darren Gough
Matthew Hoggard
Ryan Sidebottom

A bit light in the top order but plenty of bowling options!

My serious offering would be:

Cook
Trescothick
Vaughan (pre captaincy form but as captain - is that allowed!)
Pieterson
Thorpe
Bell
Prior
Swann
Harmison (2004 version)
Gough
Anderson

I think it's easy to pick players from this current side because of the success they've had. I didn't consider the likes of Gooch and Gower and I only saw the very back end of their careers. I wanted to pick Flintoff but he wasn't in the best 3 bowlers or even close to the top 6 batters. Picking him at 7 meant Prior batting at 6 and with the length of the tail compared to present times I wanted a stronger top 6.

It'd be interesting to see how a side of the best players from the last 90s where we achieved very little would have competed against todays XI.

Cook v Atherton
Strauss v Stewart
Trott v Hussain
KP v Thorpe
Bell v Ramps
Morgan v Hick
Prior v White
Bresnan v Cork
Broad v Croft
Swann v Gough
Anderson v Caddick

There's barely a name that you'd pick in front of todays players but had they played in the same era I bet many would have been in the reckoning

I can't believe no-one has picked Michael Andrew Atherton or Alec Stewart. And Darren Gough???? Ahead of Caddick or Fraser? Or Matthew Hoggard for that matter?

FWIW here's my effort...

Michael Andrew Atherton (captain)
Marcus Trescothick
David Gower
Robin Smith
Graham Thorpe
Alec Stewart
Jack Russell (wk)
Graeme Swann
Jimmy Anderson
Gus Fraser
Andy Caddick

Not the longest batting line-up but I would back that top 6 to get more than enough runs.

People harp on about this current England team being the best ever but name me more than 1 truly great bowler (Dale Steyn) currently playing Test cricket? The likes of Gooch, Atherton, Stewart and Thorpe had umpteen top top bowlers to contend with. Even the team of 2005 had to cope with an awful lot better bowlers than they do now. Not that this is a slight on the current England team who are are a superb team and fully deserve to be ranked number 1.

Darren Gough - 229 test wickets at 28
Andy Caddick - 234 wickets at 29
Angus Fraser - 177 wickets at 27
Matthew Hoggard - 248 wickets at 30

Not as much between them as you might think - notable that you chose a Lancastrian as your prime opposition to Gough's selection though, before adding in another Yorkshireman as an afterthought to reduce accusations of bias.

I went for the 2 who had the most 5 fers and 10 wicket matches, honest! I would have picked Hoggard (ahead of Fraser) as I thought he was a massively underrated bowler then and still is now until I saw Fraser had got 13 5 fers!!

Actually forgot about Stewart, stick him in for Prior and put him in front of Botham in the batting line up. I considered Trescothick and Athers but went for Boyc's as he could sit there for the day whilst all the shotmakers went for it.

Boycott
Gooch
Trott
Gower
Thorpe
Stewart
Botham
Swann
Underwood
Anderson
Willis

As I've got a genuine all rounder I'm going to have a second spinner. The tail is a bit long, but with that top seven it shouldn't matter too much.

Main weakness is the lack of a captain who was a notable success, despite six of them having done the job for England.

I have to say I'm a fan of picking the better wicketkeeper, and Stewart was nver quite so prolific with the bat whilst keeping wicket, so I thought hard about picking Knott ahead of him with Botham a place higher, but I guess my Surrey bias swung it there.

Trott isn't the most glamorous option, but he's simply the most prolific run scorer in a key position. The rest of the batting harks back to yesteryear, but I felt batsmen had it tougher then as I feel there are fewer world class bowlers in the contemporary game compared to ten, twenty or thirty years ago.