Tuesday, January 22, 2002 So just how great are Steve Waugh's Australians? It's the question that has started 10,000 pub debates, with the conversation usually going something like this:

"Better than Chappelli's lot?"
Awww, wouldn't reckon.
"How about Clive Lloyd's Windies?"
Nah.
"The Don's Invincibles of '48?"
Nah. Nah no way, mate.
"Well, what about Bradman's Best?"
(Silence, but for the gentle thwack of beer glass on vinyl bar-top and a distant, vaguely curdling, rumble.)
"You know, that poxy team he picked before his final drinks break and gave to Roland Perry, the bloke who wrote that crap book on Warney a few years ago?"
Too bloody right.

Bradman's Best, for those with short memories, was one of last year's more disposable contributions to sporting literature (although at 430 pages it's handy for scaring pigeons away). Bradman's all-time World XII, the subject of the tome, was a hopelessly unbalanced team, rife with nepotism, which called into question the conventional wisdom that Bradman was a pretty canny operator. It read: B Richards, A Morris, D Bradman, S Tendulkar, G Sobers, D Tallon, R Lindwall, D Lillee, A Bedser, B O'Reilly, C Grimmett, W Hammond (12th man).

A few weeks ago Rick Mitchell, the former Australian Olympic runner, picked his own world team to rattle Bradman's and conducted a fictitious match in the pages of the Age newspaper. Mitchell's XI won too - a rare exception to the rule that a certain amount of Bradmaniascepticism is permissible just so long as The Don still comes out on top.

And it got me thinking: I reckon almost any team I cared to pick would give Bradman's a stuffing. Just to make it interesting, I'll restrict myself to Australian players. Too easy. To make it really interesting, I'll restrict myself to Australian players with a combined tally of no more than 53 Tests between them - one for every Test Bradman played plus an extra one for the time he was 12th man (Sydney, 1928-29).

And so, after hours of deliberation and several sneak peeks at old Wisdens, here it is: my team to stuff The Don's.

1 Charlie Bannerman (born 1851, died 1930)
3 Tests, 239 runs at 59.75, 1x100; 44 fc matches, 1687 runs at 21.62, 1x100
2 Archie Jackson (1909-1933)
8 Tests, 474 runs at 47.40, 1 100; 70 fc, 4383 runs at 45.65, 11x100
3 Sunny Jim Mackay (1880-1953)
0 Tests; 20 fc, 1556 runs at 50.19, 6x100
4 Darren Lehmann (1970- )
5 Tests, 228 runs at 28.50; 196 fc, 17,430 runs at 55.86, 56x100
5 Frank Tarrant (1880-1951)
0 Tests; 329 fc, 17,952 runs at 36.41, 33 100s, 1512 wkts at 17.49, 133x5wi
6 Albert Trott (1873-1914)
3 Tests (for Aus), 205 runs at 102.50, 9 wkts at 21.33, 1x5wi, 375 fc, 10,696 runs at 19.48, 8 100s, 1,674 wkts at 21.09, 131x5wi
7 Sean Clingeleffer (1980- )
0 Tests; 15 fc, 32ct/4st, 598 runs at 33.22, 2x100
8 Ted McDonald (1891-1937)
11 Tests, 43 wkts at 33.27, 2x5wi; 281 fc, 1395 wkts at 20.76, 119x5wi
9 Fred Spofforth (1853-1926)
18 Tests, 94 wkts at 18.41, 7x5wi; 155 fc, 853 wkts at14.95, 84x5wi
10 Eddie Gilbert (1905-1978)
0 Tests; 23 fc matches, 87 wkts at 28.97, 6x5wi
11 Jack Iverson (1915-1973)
5 Tests, 21 wkts at 15.23, 1x5wi; 34 fc, 157 wkts at 19.22, 9x5wi
12th man Cec Pepper (1916-1993)
0 Tests; 44 fc, 1927 runs at 29.64, 1x100, 171 wkts at 29.35, 7x5wi

Fifty-three Tests between them and a motley, lovable bunch of blokes they are, most of them either meeting sticky ends or finding fame far away from the world's Test arenas. The bowling attack - specifically designed to expose the limitations of Bradman's four-out, all-out line-up - holds the key. The two demons Spofforth and McDonald, who terrorised England in 1921 before becoming the first and still the greatest overseas star in county cricket, are every bit as ferocious as Lillee and Lindwall. The heat is maintained in short bursts by Gilbert, the ultra-quick Aborigine, who bowled the fastest spell Bradman ever faced but was denied a Test career by the belief that the whiteness of Australian cricketers should extend beyond the colour of their flannels.

Iverson, he of the unique bent-fingered grip, would prosper amid the nurturing support of sensitive team-mates and locate the confidence to repeat his freakish feats of the 1950-51 Ashes series. Backing him up are two of Australia's most gifted allrounders: Trott - hit hard, spin hard, play hard - and Tarrant, a right-hand batsman and left-arm swinger rated in Christopher Martin-Jenkins's World Cricketers: A Biographical Dictionary as "arguably the finest allrounder never to appear in Test cricket". Australia's loss was Middlesex's gain; Tarrant played at first-class level until he was 56 and was good enough, in a match in India, to take 10 wickets in an innings and make 182 not out.

The top order is no less prodigious. It boasts, in Jackson and Mackay, both the man once rated as better than Bradman and the man originally hailed as the new Trumper. Jackson generated even more hoopla than the young Bradman until his batting tapered away and he died of tuberculosis at 23; Mackay, a quarter of a century earlier, was the talk of the newish federation in 1905-06 when he made 902 runs at 113, before ruining his eyesight in a road accident a year later.

Bookending them are Bannerman, whose 165 out of 245 in the very first Test still boggles minds and lurks in record books, and Lehmann, the unluckiest swashbuckler of his generation, who would have been good for 5000-6000 Test runs had he been born in a different era - and perhaps a more eastern state. When it comes to the keeper, Australia's snappiest glovemen (Blackham, Grout, Marsh, Healy) all blow my budget, so I'll put my money on batting street-cred and Clingeleffer, the 21-year-old currently winning knowing nods from the Hobart faithful, seems as good a bet as any. If the tail starts a fraction early then Pepper, the wartime allrounder who makes a popular drinks-carrier, can come in for Gilbert on helpful wickets.

All things considered, my lot have a distinct edge in allround depth, and raw talent, and umbrella-chewing fire and brimstone, and charisma, and romantic appeal, and ...

And OK, I confess: my team would put on a glorious exhibition and run DGB's men close but, ultimately, they would probably lose. Wouldn't you know it? Bloody Bradman's come out on top again.

Chris Ryan is managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age. More Chris Ryan
Why limit the overs?
Neutralise then pulverise

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