Greatness - frankly it is all in the mind

Politics and other polemic arguments aside, when it comes to terms such as ‘the greatest’ it makes you pause and think about who you have seen who impressed you most among all the players and why. Also, what made them the players they were in their age, their era.

It is the same for bowlers as it is for batsmen. Yet drawing up a list, of say five who did stir the imagination and excite attention, whether it is from the late 1940s, or today, is always a concern: of whose name you have left off the list. There are so many stylists and conditions that have altered radically from the days of uncovered pitches to the wearing of padding and helmets.

Also hard to imagine today is how a batsman would cope with a ball flying around his ears off a wet pitch, a ball thudding into his chest or ribs from something hard and green, and then again, batting in conditions with water seeping over their instep. Or hearing ‘fizz’ as it whips past the evading head.

Jackie McGlew, a former South African captain back in the late 1950s tells of how he faced a bowler such as Frank Tyson in 1955 in such conditions.

Sir Leonard Hutton too was quizzed about similar conditions at the Basin Reserve in Wellington in March 1951 in the second Test against New Zealand. A wet pitch had delayed the start of the game the first day and a holiday crowd was becoming restive. All it needed was fancy footwork as well and good hand-eye co-ordination and this is from a man whose right arm had been shortened through an accident in wartime. Water seeping over the instep was not an unusual occurrence in those days.