The all-time England Test XI, based on the ICC rankings

Who would make an all-time England Test XI? It’s a pretty tough ask to put that team together, so we’ve decided to take a look at what the ICC’s rankings tell us.

Based on the all-time highest ICC ratings, we’ve come up with a few rules for this XI – the side should include England’s top five-rated batsman, the wicketkeeper with the the highest batting rating, the highest-rated all-rounder and the four highest-rated bowlers (not including the chosen all-rounder, and as long as there is at least one spinner and at least three seamers in the XI).

Here’s the end result:

Len Hutton

Career best batting ranking: No.1 | Career best batting rating: 945

79 Tests, 6,971 runs @ 56.67

Of batsmen to have opened the batting in Test cricket in at least 50 innings, only Herbert Sutcliffe has a higher average than Hutton, the Yorkshireman who accrued more than 40,000 first-class runs and reached a century of tons in just 619 innings.

Jack Hobbs

Career best batting ranking: No.1 | Career best batting rating: 942

61 Tests, 5,410 runs @ 56.94

The most prolific run-scorer in first-class history. Hobbs hit more than 60,000 runs in his career and enjoyed a Test career that spanned four decades. He remains the oldest man to have ever scored a Test hundred – at 46, he compiled 142 against Australia at the MCG.

Peter May

66 Tests, 4,537 runs @ 46.77

Career best batting ranking: No.1 | Career best batting rating: 941

A Surrey and England legend who dominated the Fifties, May was also a fine captain, leading England to 20 wins in his 41 matches as skipper.

Denis Compton

Career best batting ranking: No.1 | Career best batting rating: 917

78 Tests, 5,807 runs @ 50.06

A gifted sportsman who played football for Arsenal, Compton was playing Test cricket at the age of 18 and thriving – he hit 65 and 102 in his first two innings for England. After the interruption of the Second World War, he’d go on to end his Test career in 1957.

Joe Root

Career best batting ranking: No.1 | Career best batting rating: 917

103 Tests, 8,617 runs @ 49.24

The only active player in this XI, the 30-year-old has already played more than a century of Tests and captained his country in 50 of them. In 189 innings, Root has reached fifty on 69 occasions.

Alec Stewart (wk)

Career best batting ranking: No.2 | Career best batting rating: 779

133 Tests, 8,463 runs @ 39.54 | 263 catches, 14 stumpings

No man scored more Test runs than Stewart in the 1990s. While he was far more effective with the bat without the responsibility of keeping wicket (3,923 runs @ 46.70), Stewart still excelled in the 82 Tests he took the gloves in.

Ian Botham

Career best all-round ranking: No.1 | Career best all-round rating: 645

102 Tests, 383 wickets @ 28.40 | 5,200 runs @ 33.54

The hero of ’81, Botham was England’s leading man from the late Seventies through to the early Nineties – he’s been the benchmark for English all-rounders ever since.

Tony Lock

Career best bowling ranking: No.1 | Career best bowling rating: 912

49 Tests, 174 wickets @ 25.58

A left-arm spinner who finished his career with 2,844 first-class wickets, Lock twirled in a prolific partnership with off-spinner Jim Laker for both Surrey and England. He famously hit more than 10,000 first-class runs without scoring a hundred.

Derek Underwood

Career best bowling ranking: No.1 | Career best bowling rating: 907

86 Tests, 297 wickets @ 25.83

To this day, Underwood remains England’s most prolific Test spinner. The left-armer took an astounding six 10-wicket match hauls for his country with his unusual blend of spin and medium pace.

Sydney Barnes

Career best bowling ranking: No.1 | Career best bowling rating: 932

27 Tests, 189 wickets @ 16.43

Barnes, 107 years on from his last Tests, has the highest ICC rating of any bowler. All of his wickets came against South Africa and Australia, and he remains the fastest man to 150 Test scalps in terms of matches (24).

George Lohmann

Career best bowling ranking: No.1 | Career best bowling rating: 931

18 Tests, 112 wickets @ 10.75

Lohmann once collected innings figures of 9-28 against South Africa in March 1896 – his final year as a Test cricketer – and possessed an astounding strike rate of 34.10. CB Fry, in Lohmann’s Wisden obituary, wrote this about the medium-pacer: “Most people, I believe, considered his action to have been perfect.”