Which domestic team is the greatest?

Which team will win the tournament?

  • Middlesex

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Mumbai

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Auckland

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Canterbury

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Karachi

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Gauteng-Transvaal

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • KwaZulu-Natal

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Western Province

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Sinhalese Sports Club

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Guyana

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Mashonaland

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    37
  • Poll closed .
Sometimes as I'm sifting through my mind's catalogue of cricket facts, it occurs to me that some domestic cricket teams have an astonishingly good history. Cricket is not an egalitarian sport in a collective sense (though I would argue it is in an individual sense, in that it's open for all kinds of body types and personalities in a way many other sports aren't). Once a domestic team has developed a system for consistent greatness, it rarely loses it.

So, as a result of this thinking, I eventually began asking this question: which domestic team is the greatest? There were a few names that came to mind straight away. New South Wales probably has the greatest claim to the title, having produced an entire XI of Hall of Famers, plus more on the side. But are they so far ahead of everyone else as to make the competition boring? Yorkshire, for one, has produced a vast array of talent, as has Surrey. Mumbai has dominated Indian cricket for decades. South Africa's big three of (KwaZulu)-Natal, (Gauteng) Transvaal, and Western Province have been at the pointy end of cricketing greatness for many years. Karachi and Lahore have understandably been responsible for much of Pakistan's success. And New South Wales would be nothing without its state rivals in Australia, of course. This is to say nothing of the West Indies' best nations either!

So, I decided one way to test this out would be to do something similar to a couple of other simulations I've done in the past. Using the now-dated simulator Virtual Cricket 4, I'll pick twenty domestic teams from nine different nations, all representing the best that country has to offer, to see which team can truly claim to be the king. To make it fair, they'll be playing four day first class matches, not five day Tests. Eligibility for the teams is based on birth place and place of debut, and they must have played on that team for a significant number of years. The teams are as follows:

Australia
New South Wales
1. AR Morris
2. RB Simpson
3. DG Bradman
4. VT Trumper
5. SR Waugh
6. CG Macartney
7. AK Davidson
8. WAS Oldfield
9. CTB Turner
10. WJ O'Reilly
11. GD McGrath
12. AR Border

Victoria
1. WM Woodfull
2. WH Ponsford
3. J Ryder
4. RN Harvey
5. AL Hassett
6. KR Miller
7. WW Armstrong
8. JM Blackham
9. SK Warne
10. H Trumble
11. PR Reiffel
12. DM Jones
Western Australia

1. JL Langer
2. MEK Hussey
3. SM Katich
4. DR Martyn
5. KJ Hughes
6. TM Moody
7. RW Marsh
8. B Yardley
9. DK Lillee
10. TM Alderman
11. BA Reid
12. RJ Inverarity
England

Middlesex
1. JDB Robertson
2. WJ Edrich
3. MW Gatting
4. DCS Compton
5. JW Hearne
6. EH Hendren
7. GOB Allen
8. FJ Titmus
9. JT Murray
10. JT Hearne
11. AE Moss
12. JE Emburey

Surrey
1. JB Hobbs
2. JH Edrich
3. PBH May
4. KF Barrington
5. TW Hayward
6. MR Ramprakash
7. AJ Stewart
8. JC Laker
9. AV Bedser
10. GA Lohmann
11. T Richardson
12. R Abel

Yorkshire
1. G Boycott
2. H Sutcliffe
3. L Hutton
4. JE Root
5. FS Jackson
6. GH Hirst
7. W Rhodes
8. G Ulyett
9. H Verity
10. FS Trueman
11. JG Binks
12. R Illingworth
India

Karnataka
1. KL Rahul
2. V Subramanya
3. R Dravid
4. GR Vishwanath
5. BP Patel
6. RHM Binny
7. SMH Kirmani
8. A Kumble
9. J Srinath
10. EAS Prasanna
11. BS Chandrasekhar
12. BKV Prasad

Bombay-Mumbai
1. VM Merchant
2. SM Gavaskar
3. DB Vengsarkar
4. SR Tendulkar
5. PR Umrigar
6. MH Mankad
7. FM Engineer
8. KD Ghavri
9. Zaheer Khan
10. PK Shivalkar
11. SP Gupte
12. RB Desai
New Zealand

Auckland
1. MH Richardson
2. MD Crowe
3. BN Sutcliffe
4. WM Wallace
5. JF Reid
6. JG Bracewell
7. IDS Smith
8. AR Adams
9. HJ Howarth
10. DK Morrison
11. J Cowie
12. MJ Guptill

Canterbury
1. SP Fleming
2. WA Hadlee
3. MP Donnelly
4. CZ Harris
5. NJ Astle
6. CD McMillan
7. LK Germon
8. RJ Hadlee
9. SE Bond
10. RC Motz
11. TB Burtt
12. BR Taylor
Pakistan

Karachi
1. Saeed Anwar
2. Hanif Mohammad
3. Mohsin Khan
4. Shoaib Mohammad
5. Javed Miandad
6. Mushtaq Mohammad
7. Asif Iqbal
8. Rashid Latif
9. Iqbal Qasim
10. Mohammad Sami
11. Saleem Jaffar
12. Wasim Raja
Lahore

1. Mudassar Nazar
2. Azhar Ali
3. Majid Khan
4. Mohammad Yousuf
5. Salim Malik
6. Imran Khan
7. Imtiaz Ahmed
8. Wasim Akram
9. Abdul Qadir
10. Saqlain Mushtaq
11. Fazal Mahmood
12. Sarfraz Nawaz

South Africa
Gauteng-Transvaal
1. EJ Barlow
2. SJ Cook
3. B Mitchell
4. GA Faulkner
5. CEB Rice
6. AJ Kourie
7. DT Lindsay
8. JHB Waite
9. RO Schwarz
10. NAT Adcock
11. AE Hall
12. EAB Rowan

KwaZulu-Natal
1. BA Richards
2. DJ McGlew
3. HM Amla
4. AD Nourse
5. HW Taylor
6. TL Goddard
7. BL Irvine
8. MJ Procter
9. SM Pollock
10. VAP van der Bijl
11. HJ Tayfield
12. AEE Vogler

Western Province
1. HH Gibbs
2. G Kirsten
3. JH Kallis
4. AJ Lamb
5. PN Kirsten
6. JP Duminy
7. HB Cameron
8. JM Blanckenberg
9. VD Philander
10. GS Le Roux
11. DL Hobson
12. CR Matthews

Sri Lanka
Sinhalese Sports Club

1. FDM Karunaratne
2. NT Paranavitana
3. MS Atapattu
4. DPMD Jayawardene
5. A Ranatunga
6. RLD Mendis
7. PB Dassanayake
8. KTGD Prasad
9. DNT Zoysa
10. CRD Fernando
11. GP Wickramasinghe
12. SMSM Senanayake

West Indies
Barbados

1. CG Greenidge
2. CC Hunte
3. FMM Worrell
4. ED Weekes
5. CL Walcott
6. GS Sobers
7. DA Murray
8. MD Marshall
9. J Garner
10. WW Hall
11. CC Griffith
12. DL Haynes

Guyana
1. CH Lloyd
2. RC Fredericks
3. RB Kanhai
4. S Chanderpaul
5. CL Hooper
6. A Kallicharran
7. BF Butcher
8. RJ Christiani
9. LR Gibbs
10. CEH Croft
11. RA Harper
12. J Trim

Jamaica
1. CH Gayle
2. AF Rae
3. LG Rowe
4. GA Headley
5. OG Smith
6. JC Adams
7. PJL Dujon
8. MA Holding
9. JE Taylor
10. AL Valentine
11. CA Walsh
12. BP Patterson

Zimbabwe
Mashonaland

1. H Masakadza
2. GW Flower
3. MW Goodwin
4. DL Houghton
5. A Flower
6. BRM Taylor
7. T Taibu
8. RW Price
9. EA Brandes
10. BC Strang
11. KM Jarvis
12. PA Strang

The tournament will be a home and away season, complete with pitches appropriate to the home team. Who do you think will win?

(Before anyone asks, WA is in there because their team is more even than the Queensland team, and better overall than the SA team - both of which benefited from overseas and interstate players in their time.)
 
Last edited:

eltrain

Club Legend
Dec 22, 2013
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Between NSW and Barbados for mine, both of those XIs are legendary. Mumbai in Mumbai would be pretty unstoppable though I’d think.
 
He scored 30 first class hundreds outside of tests so he still would have played a few.

He belted 200 for them in a tour match against Australia including warne in 1998 from memory

You would never see that in a tour match today. Most home countries now field s**t teams.
 
Feb 13, 2011
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couldn't squeeze in kim hughes into the WA side ?
Was about to ask the same thing, played with and against Clag for years and in my opinion WA greatest batsman. I know stats tell a different story but one must remember the era Hughes played test cricket in.
Anyway just an opinion.

I was intending to, then I looked at his stats. His FC record is actually lower than his Test record, which isn't that high to begin with. I was a bit shocked.

How many matches did Tendulkar actually play for Mumbai? Can't have been many?

38 in the Ranji Trophy.
 
Oct 3, 2007
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I was intending to, then I looked at his stats. His FC record is actually lower than his Test record, which isn't that high to begin with. I was a bit shocked.



38 in the Ranji Trophy.

Fair enough as its your opinion, if i had to select WA greatest side he would be first picked of the batsman and by some huge margin. Stats are stats and must stand up to a point. But Kim was a sensational player.
 
Feb 6, 2013
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Simmed through a NSW v VIC game at the SCG with OP squads using a historical database I've been tinkering with for CC2014:
VIC v NSW.png

One at MCG:
NSW v VIC.jpg
 
Last edited:
May 5, 2016
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For a fairly small place the Barbados side is insane. Them v NSW in the final for mine.
That Lahore bowling lineup would be unplayable in the right conditions too.

And the majority of that side - 7 of them - were all in the team at the same time. The other four? All in it at the same time as well I’m pretty sure. Amazing for a place as big as Launceston to have that sheer volume of quality in the team at the same time.
 
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