Welcome to CRICKET ELEVENS. This is a brand new site and updates or added comments will be constantly appearing. We do not happen to think the way the game is being portrayed is all that flash, particularly the persistent nonsense coming out of Australia's Channel Nine and most of England's SKY lot. The game deserves better.

The Stats will be updated at the end of each half-season. (Last update: November 9, 2011)

Why Cricket?

When looking at the history of cricket it is not the results that are of interest, but the players. With the exception of the rare exciting finishes, what stays in the memory of cricket observers are the great shots, the great bowling, the great catches. Batsmenship, bowling artistry and athleticism is what sets the great players apart from the good ones, and it's what causes the crowds to endure through a game that at times can be deadly dull. It's the beginning of the game that is the most interesting, when the players and fresh and no one knows what may happen. When the result is obvious and near, that's when the interest wanes. Cricket is about performance more than result, the same as it's about individuals rather than team. The crowds watch through the dull times to catch glimpses of brilliance, that wonderful drive, that stupefying catch, that great fightback that changes the course of a match.

Why this site?

This website focuses on the great players of every recorded era of the game, and by that we can see how cricket was played throughout the years, and what took the imagination of the crowds. Our intention is to preserve the history of the game of cricket in the face of the ever-present corporate media nonsense and commercially-driven bluster that chokes the modern game. Cricket's history is formidable but it is with sadness to admit that the great players of past eras have long been forgotten. There is a strange attitude towards the early versions of the game, that they were not playing real cricket, or that the games were not competitive. This flies in the face of what is known about the game in the seventeenth century, when fielders were killed by zealous batsmen not wanting to get out, and that they not only played without helmets, but without gloves or pads. Cricket has always been played hard and tough at the highest level of the day.

Who were the best?

It is often said that leading players in one era of the game would be leading players in another era. Just because a certain cricketer played at a time when the bats were curved and the ball was rolled along bumpy turf, when they all wore funny clothes, doesn't mean he isn't up to the level of today's players of era of pampered velcroed, supercharged bats on flat pitches with short boundaries. The game's greatest players, dominating above everyone else of their generation, were therefore Bedle, Waymark, Beldham, Beauclerk, Grace and Bradman. Most of those names have long been forgotten, and only one played Tests from a young age, but that doesn't make any of them lesser players. This website places these and other great players in their proper role in the context of cricket history, in the DECADE XIs. For those players who played during the era of Test matches we can easily track their performances, and they are rated in the top four WORLD XIs, and the best for each country in the COUNTRY XIs.

But why stop there?

The players' birthday is the criteria for the CALENDAR XIs, with January through to December represented. You would think that this would show the best 132 players divided into the twelve months, but what we find instead is that some months are strong and some are weak. Who knew that July had some of the greatest players and August hardly any, or that November happens to produce great all-rounders?

What's with the funny stats?

A prevailing and very strange opinion on the game, throughout all cricket media, is that the statistics of the game are mostly irrelevant. They hardly ever talk about them, and concentrate mostly on who has the most of anything. The idea that the "most" means the "best" has no meaning since the number of games played nowdays is at least ten times what was played not so long ago. Maybe what is irrelevant is the ancient and out-of-date method of tracking players' performances. This site uses a system that I have used for the last twenty years and they have never let me down. As seen in ABOUT THE STATS, there are no complicated equations to stare at and wonder over, no opinion needed that would cause an unfair bias, nothing but the players' actual performances.

All content Copyright 2010, RB Banfield