THE BEST

Andy Ganteaume

Hailing from humble beginnings, the Trinidadian keeper-batsman was a victim of his time and place. Cricket in the Caribbean was rife with politicking, racial quotas and… talent − this being the age of Weekes, Worrell and Walcott. Ganteaume was begrudgingly picked for the 1948 Port of Spain Test as a makeshift opener for the injured Jeff Stollmeyer. He proceeded to score 112 against Gubby Allen’s England and was gifted a Raleigh bicycle and a silver jug by locals for his efforts – more Alan Sillitoe than Allen Stanford. All he got from the selectors, however, was a cruel snub. Criticised for scoring too slowly, he was dropped and never played another Test. The only man in history to have a higher Test average than Don Bradman.

Rodney Redmond

Redmond memorably pillaged five fours in consecutive balls off Majid Khan on Test debut at Auckland in ’73. Rattling along to 107 at nearly a run-a-ball, the Kiwi left-hander’s strike rate was ‘Twenty20’ even if his vision wasn’t. He later said, “If you put me in the outfield and the ball went up, you wouldn’t put your house on me catching it”. Struggling to adjust to new prescription contact lenses on the subsequent tour of England led to a loss of form and he wasn’t picked again. One hundred, one fifty, one Test; despite the flurry of fours, Redmond’s legacy is a binary one.

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Stuart Law

So golden was the Australian generation of his time that a player of Law’s obvious class was left to languish on top of their Nineties player landfill. The Queenslander would have sauntered into any other Test team of the time. So far were the poms off the pace that for years Law was the standout batsman in English domestic cricket but barely got a sniff Down Under. His only Test knock − 54* against Sri Lanka at Perth in 1995 – also left him bereft of a Test average. Test cricket can be cruel, it fought the Law and… won. Just like the Aussies did, a lot.

“He’s one of the most unlucky cricketers of the modern era.”

Stuart Law hit 79 first-class hundreds across his career but played just one Test for Australia… in which he hit 54 not out. https://t.co/W180GHQElf

— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) March 28, 2020

Charles Marriott

Marriott’s life reads like a William Boyd novel. ‘Father’, as he was affectionately monikered after attending Cambridge University at the grand old age of 25, fought in the Battle of the Somme. At the grander age of 37 he was picked to bowl his wily leg-spin in place of the injured Hedley Verity and bagged 11 West Indian wickets in a 1933 Test match at The Oval. He never played another but fought in two World Wars, leaving his teaching post at Dulwich College, ‘Father’ joined ‘Dad’s Army’− as an anti-aircraft gunner he patrolled the skies rather than the boundary edge.

THE WORST

Bryce McGain

McGain, a talented leggie who had a career in computing, put in a string of impressive performances for Victoria and went from the ‘IT-crowd’ to the ‘in-crowd’ and back again. Picked to play at Cape Town in ’09, a nervous performance and figures of 0-149 – at that point the worst-ever by a Test debutant – meant that at the age of 36, McGain’s international career was turned on and off again for good.

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Andy Lloyd

Malcolm Marshall rumbles in at Edgbaston and gets one to spit like a cross camel and crash into Lloyd’s bonce, putting him in hospital half-an-hour into his Test debut. The Warwickshire left-hander spends the next week there and doesn’t pick up a bat for the rest of the ’84 season. Lloyd goes on to score over 17,000 first-class runs but doesn’t play for his country again. Ouch.

Darren Pattinson

Central contracts and a more stable selection policy in the Noughties meant the picks that didn’t work for England stood out like a chipped tooth in a Hollywood smile. Enter, Darren Pattinson. Who? Exactly. That was the word on most England fans’ lips when it was announced over the Tannoy that Pattinson, the older brother of Aussie quick James, would play in the ’08 Headingley Test against South Africa. Had the announcer poured sherry on his Shreddies? It was actually Matthew Hoggard who had partaken in a rather large drink, at his benefit dinner a couple of days earlier. He was “unfit” for selection according to his captain Michael Vaughan, Pattinson proving to be the fall guy as the Proteas racked up 522 and thumped England.