The Blaze of Glory XI

Andy Sandham: would have been a goner if they had Twitter in his time
© ESPNcricinfo Ltd



Further to my reflections on the dimming of great players' careers a couple of blogs ago, and the struggles of India's once-golden-but-now-greying batting generation, here, by way of happy contrast, is part one of the Official Confectionery Stall Going Out in a Blaze Of Glory Test XI.

The selection committee (me; my two children, who regrettably missed the selection meeting due to it being well past their bedtimes; and my wife, who abstained in protest at the increasingly domineering influence of Twenty20 on global cricket; and the ghost of former England skipper Douglas Jardine [via ouija board]) established various criteria for this deeply prestigious XI:

● Players should have had Test careers that were not an unremitting blaze of glory. Murali left the Test scene by spinning Sri Lanka to victory on his home turf and taking his 800th wicket with his final ball. There have been few more spectacular partings from any scene since Laika the Soviet Cosmodog's last ever walkies saw her chasing her final stick in outer space. Warne and McGrath helped Australia to a cleansing, vengeance-assisted 5-0 Ashes clouting of England, and exited to universal baggy green worship. Bradman, despite his final-innings duck, averaged 105 in his 15 post-war Tests, and in his penultimate innings had smashed 173 not out to chase down a record 404 in less than a day to win the fourth Test. But these men knew little but glory for most of their careers. And, in fact, all four of those legends saw their Test averages worsen (relatively) in their final series. The panel wanted players whose career-ending triumphs came, if not totally unexpectedly, then certainly in contrast to their overall career performances.

● The players' careers should have been long enough for the blaze of parting glory to stand out from a more general smoulder of adequacy. Barry Richards came into and departed from Test cricket in a veritable conflagration of magnificence in just seven innings, the last a dazzling 126 to help seal a South African whitewash of Australia. In the same game, Mike Procter had match figures of 9 for 103, to finish with 26 wickets at 13 in his final series. But it was the final series of two, and the other one had been almost equally stellar. They have no place in this team.

● The committee resisted the temptation to pick Jason Gillespie as a specialist batsman. Double-centuries against Bangladesh do not count as blazes of glory, any more than me slotting an ice-cool penalty past my three-year-old son in the Zaltzgarden last weekend warranted the celebration that it prompted.

● The committee, under the terms of the UN Convention on Sporting Selection Committees, reserved the right to select players on an unexplained personal whim.

Here are the top four batsmen:

1. Andrew Sandham (England, blazed out gloriously in 1929-30)
Sandham had failed as a Test batsman in the early 1920s, with a solitary half-century in ten sporadic Tests, but, aged 39, with England's resources stretched, he was selected for the tour of West Indies in 1929-30. It was an under-strength team. Not only did Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Hammond all take the winter off, but England were simultaneously playing another Test series in New Zealand. And to think that people complain about the hectic international schedule and player rotation devaluing international caps now.

Surrey stalwart Sandham scored 152 and 51 in the first Test, but followed up with four single-figure scores in the next two, and thanked his lucky stars that technology's development of the internet message board remained a solid 70 or so years in the future, and that 1930 cricket fans would merely tut quietly at their newspapers in a few days' time, whilst smoking a pipe, rather than instantly logging on, impugning Sandham's parentage, and calling for Lancashire's Frank Watson to be given a go instead, after a promising season in the County Championship.

Sandham walked to the crease in the final Test with a Test average of 24 after 13 Tests. He walked away from it at the end of the match with a rather broader grin, and an average of 38, after scoring 325 and 50. His efforts did not result in a valedictory victory, however. The supposedly timeless game was called off as a draw to enable England to catch the boat home.

Arguably, with a handy first-innings lead of 563, captain Freddie Calthorpe could have risked enforcing the follow-on, but erred on side of caution, to the surprise of many, not least of caution itself, which in the circumstances was settling down for a spot of sunbathing and not expecting to be disturbed. Rain, the transatlantic shipping schedule, and the genius of George Headley saved West Indies, and with Hobbs and Sutcliffe restored for the summer's Ashes, Sandham never played Test cricket again.

(Footnote: Sandham was born in Streatham, where I now live, so, according to the traditions of selectorial privilege applied intermittently throughout cricket history, I'm picking him.)