An XI of total losers

Andy Flower recounts the horror of watching Gary Kirsten bat from two feet away
© Getty Images



A rather bizarre English international summer concluded with a nostalgia-fuelled display of English incompetence at The Oval, skittled by a rookie West Indian team amidst a flurry of schoolboy errors – a curious bookend to a season in which they had often struck perfection and seldom dipped below excellence. England's cricketing present and future have seldom seemed rosier. Helped by the fact that several other countries' cricketing presents and futures, in the Test arena at least, seem as rosy as a concrete car park.

My personal highlight of the season was the colossal showdown between England's unceasingly incisive pace attack and the majestic throwback batsmanship of Rahul Dravid, who presented the only significant barrier to one of the finest team series bowling performances of recent years. The Bangalore Bulwark became the sixth man to score his team's only three centuries in a series, and the third to do so in a losing cause, after Lara in Sri Lanka in 2001-02 and HW Taylor for South Africa against England in 1922-23.

It is often said that in professional sport winning is the only thing that matters. This is patently rubbish. For fans, if not for players. In tribute to Dravid's heroics in a team that was so conclusively routed, therefore, here is the Confectionery Stall Great Series Performances in Defeated Teams XI.

Criteria for selection: candidates must have performed wonders over the course of a losing series, ideally with minimal or non-existent support, and even more ideally whilst his team was being ground to a pulp like a piece of garlic in a recently divorced French chef's kitchen.