Left field
The Reuters global sports blog
All-time world cricket XI proves difficult to choose
Garfield Sobers stirred a minor controversy when he stated a preference for India’s Subhash Gupte ahead of Shane Warne in a mythical all-time World XI.
In an introduction to “In a League of their Own”, a recently released book in which 100 great cricketers select their ideal XI, Sobers said he found it too difficult to select his greatest team.
He leaves, though, no doubt about his personal philosophy, an uncompromising and thoroughly Caribbean commitment to attacking cricket.
Peter May, for example, is widely regarded as the finest English batsman since World War Two. To Sobers, his lack of a hook shot disqualifies him from the elite.
