Wednesday, January 30, 2002 Wherever you look these days there is a one-day international. Test cricket is still the real benchmark, but the short game has its own merits. It is also less stressful. You might spend the night before a Test thinking more than you should about your approach. The best players, especially, have one-day cricket down to such a fine art that if they stay up all night before a match it is not because they are worrying about the opposition.

Before a match against India at Gujranwala in December 1982 I couldn't get to sleep - this had nothing to do with the opposition's bowling - and our coach left at six in the morning, but I still scored a century. One-day cricket is instinctive enough that you can get away with it.

A one-day batsman has to be adaptable, think quickly, and accumulate runs according to the match situation. You also have to balance the target against the strength of the remaining bowlers. A rate lower than the one required will sometimes do, as long as you preserve wickets, stay in touch, and know that there are weak links in the bowling attack that you can still exploit. These skills have helped produce more results in Test cricket as well. Only yesterday, Michael Bevan gave a supreme example of how it should be done.

He is clearly among the best current one-day batsmen, and there are many top performers on the world stage. Australia also have the Waugh brothers and Adam Gilchrist. New Zealand's Nathan Astle and Craig McMillan are great one-day players. So are Herschelle Gibbs, Gary Kirsten, Jacques Kallis and Jonty Rhodes of South Africa. From the India-England series I would pick out Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Marcus Trescothick, Graham Thorpe and Nasser Hussain as players of high quality and experience.

Throw in Brian Lara, Saeed Anwar, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Yousuf Youhana, Sanath Jayasuriya, Marvan Attapatu and Andy Flower, and you can see that many players have perfected the art of one-day batting. All these players have the ability and the quick wits to win a game single-handedly. They are polished and unlikely to come under pressure whatever the match situation. They enjoy the one-day game, and barely notice the transition from the long to the short version. That is how it should be.

It is difficult to pick a batting line-up from them, as almost any combination would work, but if I had to I'd start with Kirsten and Tendulkar, as they are more dependable than some of the other openers. My next man in would be Kallis, who would also be the fifth bowler. Then it gets even trickier - but I think Inzamam, Lara, Bevan, and Gilchrist would fill the next slots. They are powerful, adaptable, and probably unbeatable.

World cricket is once again full of allrounders. Chris Cairns, Chris Harris, Wasim Akram, Abdur Razzaq and Shaun Pollock are wonderful one-day players, but I can find room for only two of them in my team. Cairns and Akram, both destructive and consistent matchwinners in one-day cricket, would be my selection.

After that there's room for only two out-and-out bowlers. And Shane Warne is definitely not in the running - I'll stick to my view of him as a spent force. One-day bowlers have to be good at reading a batsman's game, and be able to bowl with great variety. Few people think beyond yorkers at the death. That's fine if the target is nine or ten an over, but when the run rate is more manageable, variety and attacking fields are risks worth taking. Losing a wicket is a bigger setback to a batting side than a slowing of the run rate. Out of Glenn McGrath, Muttiah Muralitharan, Saqlain Mushtaq and Waqar Younis, I would back McGrath and Murali. That gives me five front-line bowlers, with Tendulkar and Bevan as back-up.

Only Tendulkar, Lara, and Wasim have captaincy experience in this side. Lara is my choice to captain. He led West Indies during a difficult period - when they were in decline. Their team is still struggling and this shows that Lara was not the cause. They just don't have enough quality players. Of course, he made mistakes but he is wiser now. Even in his captaincy days, his batting alone could inspire the team to victory. In the field he is alive to the situation and imaginative. Lara needs a strong team, this team, to bring out the best in him.

This is a side to beat any team in this or any other world. But the second string from the players I've mentioned would give them one hell of a game.

Javed's world one-day XI 1 Gary Kirsten, 2 Sachin Tendulkar, 3 Jacques Kallis, 4 Brian Lara (capt), 5 Inzamam-ul-Haq, 6 Michael Bevan, 7 Adam Gilchrist (wk), 8 Chris Cairns, 9 Wasim Akram, 10 Glenn McGrath, 11 Muttiah Muralitharan.

Javed Miandad, Pakistan's most prolific batsman and later their coach, was talking to Kamran Abbasi. His column appears every Wednesday.

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