The greatest ever West Indian batsman

[Nostromo]

If you are talking about World sides, IMO the No:1 position (in batting order, that is) would go to Sir Leonard Hutton, the greatest opening batsman in history. It is not generally known that after the war - which included some 80% of his Test career, he batted with a handicap following a war injury. He was better than Jack Hobbs and Sunil Gavaskar.

[pie_chucker]

Len Hutton probably is the greatest opening bat in history, but Greenidge and Haynes are probably the best pair. If you add Richards, Lara, Headley and Sobers thats probably the finest top 6 ever.

A bowling attack of Marshall, Ambrose, Garner and Holding (with back up from Sobers) IMO would be the finest pace attack ever, making a pretty strong team.

[Jebjab]

How could you leave out Courtney Walsh? Until Warne and McGrath broke his wicket taking records he had 519!

BTW Gerry Alexander was without peer for the West Indies behind the stumps.Remember he did not have to score runs just keep wickets.

[arsalan660]

IMO Brian Lara because I seen only few players from the list and from that few Lara is the best.

[Warne]

Brian Lara _ 2 scores over 350, one over 250, played Warnie well, on his day looked like he was taking a coaching class, clubbed Peterson for 26 in an over, was more aesthetic than Sir Viv. So, Lara.

[Warne]

Originally Posted by Ninjaman

Ok, you like bowlers and the art of bowling.

Nothing wrong with that!



Sobers
Headley
Richards
Lara

The first 4 will be considered in an all time top five without the merest thought.

Well, I've given it a thought & I've come up with names, Bradman(the greatest),Ponting(if he goes on for another 3-4 years) & Gavaskar. Don't always believe in the urban legends regarding Headley. And yeah, Gilly just as destructive as Sir Viv. Just because he doesn't chew gums & is a soft spoken folk deosn't mean he can't decimate bowling attacks. And, he has another job to do for the team.

[Aurelius]

My team would be as follows

1. Greenidge
2. Headley
3. Lara
4. Weekes
5. Richards (c)
6.Sobers
7. Dujon (w)
8. Marshall
9. Holding
10. Ambrose
11. Gibbs

You've simply gotta have a spinner to cover all circumstances- I think the Windies suffered hugely not having a spinner in England. Sure, you can make the case that an attack of say Marshall, Holding, Ambrose and Roberts would bowl out any lineup- you could also make the same case that Lillee, Lindwall, Davidson, McGrath and Miller would similarly bowl out any lineup as an excuse to leave out Warne or O'Reilly. Now that just wouldn't work.

[clwalcott]

I can't believe anyone votes for someone who isn't Sobers or Lara. Headley was in arguably the greatest batting era of all time and played like 20 Tests and Viv Richards wasn't even the best batsman of his generation, which seems to me to clearly be Greg Chappell. I prefer Lara but can see the case for Sobers.

[jrwb]

I really wish some of you writing posts would not limit yourselves to cricketers you actually saw. Good gracious, this forum is supposedly for people with above-average knowledge of cricket - and for those who never saw a particular cricketer, their is a wealth of information to be read from those who saw them play. Most of us acknowledge The Don as the greatest of all batsmen, but how many of us have actually seen him play? In that case nobody would be any good if we didn't see them play.

[jrwb]

Having said the above - here's my greatest ever line up:

Dwayne Smith
Dwayne Bravo
Sylvester Joseph
Narsingh Deonarine
Donovan Pagon
Dwight Washington
Xavier Marshall
Runako Morton
Denesh Ramdin
Ryan Ramdass
Ian Bradshaw