We move on from the West Indies match. (The rules of the game are explained here.) This time Alex gets choice of country and first choice of player. He's gone for Australia and made the predictable initial selection. All I can say is: ouch! This puts me on my mettle. Here are our two teams in the order the players have been chosen:
Alex's Team: Don Bradman (a), Keith Miller (b), Dennis Lillee (c), Ray Lindwall (d), Richie Benaud (e), Neil Harvey (f), Greg Chappell (g), Arthur Morris (h), Bill O'Reilly (i), Bill Lawry (j), Ian Healy (k)
Norm's Team: Shane Warne (a), Adam Gilchrist (b), Glenn McGrath (c), Alan Davidson (d), Ricky Ponting (e), Steve Waugh (f), Allan Border (g), Bobby Simpson (h), Sid Barnes (i), Bill Johnston (j), Stuart Clark (k)
You can follow the game at Alex's place as well.
The two batting orders:
Alex's: 1. Lawry 2. Morris 3. Bradman 4. Chappell 5. Harvey 6. Miller 7. Healy (wkt) 8. Benaud (capt) 9. Lindwall 10. Lillee 11. O'Reilly
Norm's: 1. Simpson 2. Barnes 3. Ponting 4. Border (capt) 5. Waugh 6. Gilchrist (wkt) 7. Davidson 8. Warne 9. Clark 10. McGrath 11. Johnston
Alex is confident of victory, and who can blame him, with two batsmen in one in the person of the Don. It's not easy to make a quarrel of this, but that's not going to stop me from... saying he can't take victory for granted. His team have the better of the batting, true; BUT my five frontline bowlers have a better composite bowling average than his five AND a better composite wickets-per-Test ratio, though in the latter case only marginally. Furthermore, with Simpson, Border and Waugh in my team, you're going to have trouble getting all ten wickets twice per game. So it'll be a tough contest.