The elegant and the ineffective

Chris Lewis: explosive, athletic, bereft of good sense
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As the cricket world digests the big cricket news of the cricket week − that Alastair Cook still has some work to do to earn inclusion in ESPNcricinfo's all-time XI; that Australia remain very poor at forcing wins in games that are completely washed out (a shortcoming England, as holders, will be looking to exploit in the Ashes); and that Michael Clarke not only thinks that Ricky Ponting should captain Australia in the Ashes, but said so out loud in an interview, thus proving it − the time seems right for another Confectionery Stall XI.

This is the first Confectionery Stall XI for some time, and as the highly enjoyable season of ESPNcricinfo XIs draws to a close (taking with it the even more enjoyable season of readers' reactions to ESPNcricinfo XIs), I felt it was time to jump on the XI-selecting bandwagon before it is driven off to the ESPN scrapyard and the pieces sold off to another website.

I particularly enjoyed Suresh Menon's Elegant XI − a useful team, without question, but heavily biased in favour of all-time greats of the game. I feel this is deeply unfair to the stylish underachievers of cricket history, players who have looked great in action but less great in the scorebook. I therefore submit the Confectionery Stall Elegant But (Relatively) Ineffective XI, a team of the not-so-great-but-nonetheless-pleasing-on-the-eye who have intermittently entranced but more often frustrated the international-cricket-watching universe.

It should be remembered that elegance is not always a reliable hallmark of quality. When I was at school, there was a seam bowler who used to flow into the wickets with the ease of a thoroughbred racehorse, then bowl with perfect rhythm and an easy athleticism, reminiscent of a slow-motion Michael Holding. The last time I saw him play, he was bowling quite well in the West Kent Village League. He had a prettier action than Curtly Ambrose but was, by other conventionally accepted measures of bowling quality, not as good.

In my own village team I used to open with a player who was, in almost every aspect of batsmanship, useless. He struggled to keep good balls out. He struggled to keep bad balls out. He struggled. But every now and again – perhaps twice or three times a summer – he would unfurl an extra-cover drive so majestically perfect that it seemed as if Viv Richards had momentarily invaded his body, as if Wally Hammond's handkerchief should have been fluttering from his trouser pocket. Next ball he would play down the line of leg stump and see his off peg splattered, or attempt a pull shot and spoon-plonk it to extra cover, or be trapped lbw trying to square-cut a full-toss. But those cover drives were worth a whole summer of single-figure failures.

Perhaps the most elegant English batsman of recent years has been no-Test wonder Vikram Solanki, whose contribution to international cricket comprised 51 ODIs and three Twenty20 matches, in which he averaged in the mid-20s. The first of his two hundreds for England was a magical innings against Pollock, Ntini, Kallis et al at The Oval in 2003. The Wisden verdict: "Solanki finally arrived as an international batsman... few players can demand drooling admiration for an innings. Solanki is one of them."

His England career, however, generated a disappointingly small pool of drool. He passed 10 once in his next eight innings, was dropped, and departed international cricket three sporadic years later as the latest in an illustrious cavalcade of What-Might-Have-Beens of modern English cricket.

But how good was Solanki? Because he could play shots from the cricketing heavens, there is a tendency to think he underachieved. Paul Collingwood, by contrast, is often regarded as an overachiever who has made the most of his relatively limited talents. His batting has the flourish of an egg sandwich and the elegance of a steamrollered hedgehog. But his fielding reveals phenomenal hand-eye co-ordination and athleticism, and his timing is often extraordinary. But because he nudges the ball for four rather than strokes it, he generates no drool. Plenty of admiration, but none of it drooling. The only drool Collingwood prompts slowly dribbles from the snoozing mouths of opposing fans whilst he is compiling one of his famous match-saving rearguards.

Here, then, is the Confectionery Stall Elegant But Ineffective XI – a personal selection of players in my cricket-watching life (1981 to the present day) who have played the game with style, panache, flamboyance, and above all, limited top-level success. Qualification: must have played Test cricket. Maximum batting average: 38. Minimum bowling average: 30.