Dickie Bird's All TIme Great XI

Sunil Gavaskar, not Sachin Tendulkar, in Dickie Bird's Test XI

TNN | Apr 19, 2013, 01.29 AM IST

Sunil Gavaskar is the only Indian in the XI as Sachin Tendulkar misses out. (AFP Photo)

BANGALORE: Umpiring legend Harold 'Dickie' 

Bird is someone who believes respect cannot be

 bought, but earned. While some of the cricketing

 world's greatest stars like Sachin Tendulkar and

Brian Lara surely have his respect, gaining entry

 into his all-time greatest Test XI is a tougher feat

 than they would have imagined.

Picking the side for a British daily ahead of his

 80th birthday on Friday, Bird suggested he

 has no issues leaving out Aussie legend

 Donald Bradman too. Curiously, the

 top-10 run makers in Tests don't figure in Bird's

 line-up.

His team is captained by Pakistani pacer Imran Khan, whose knowledge of the game

 "wasoutstanding". Sunil Gavaskar is the only Indian in the XI as he "was one of the two best

 opening bats I saw".

The list has South African batting great Barry Richards and his countryman Graeme Pollock, 

three Australians in Greg Chappell, Shane Warne and Dennis Lillee, as many West Indians in

 Garfield Sobers, Viv Richards and Lance Gibbs and a lone Englishman - wicketkeeper Alan Knott.

Apparently, Bird gave Barry and Pollock the benefit of the doubt, stating that both careers 

were cruelly curtailed by the apartheid. Having said that, Barry's stint with Hampshire in

 county cricket would have given Bird enough reason to pick him for his playing XI.



That he has chosen to give the famed West Indies pace quartet - Michael Holding, Colin 

Croft, Joel Garner and Andy Roberts - the miss too, is interesting, as is his choice of captain 

at the expense of Clive Lloyd or his own countryman Mike Brearley.

His spinners - Shane Warne and Lance Gibbs - are doubtless world class but then his picks

 may lead to furrowed brows among Indians as the spin quartet of the 70s - Bishan Bedi

, BS Chandrashekar, EAS Prasanna and Venkataraghavan - had held the world in a thrall.

Close to two decades after he hung up his famous white coat, the cricketing world can't help 

but talk fondly of the Englishman who became the game's first superstar umpire. His quirky

 antics as a "not-outer" and strong values while playing the "benefit of the doubt" card made

 Bird one of the most respected invigilators of the game's laws.

"You can't buy respect, you have to earn it," Bird was quoted as saying. "And I can honestly 

tell you I had not one problem with any professional cricketer. If I go to Pakistan, Imran Khan

 and Javed Miandad invite me round for a meal at their place. If I go to Australia the first man

 to ring me is Dennis Lillee. If I go to West Indies, the first man on the phone will be Garfield 

Sobers, the greatest that's ever lived. You'll never see another like him, not in your lifetime,"

 the newspaper quoted Bird as saying.

A former batsman who made only two hundreds in 93 first-class appearances thanks to his 

anxiety issues, Bird always fancied himself as a player and compared his skills with that of 

Geoffrey Boycott.

Bird lamented in the interview the end of cricket's glory days with technological invasion putting

 paid to decisions going unchallenged and players not having a bit of a laugh on the ground. 

"The characters have gone out of all sports haven't they?" he was quoted as saying.

Bird, however, admitted that his heart still belonged to the game. "It's still the greatest game

 in the world, cricket," he said.