Be Excellent To Each Other

So,

You take the best 11 bowlers in the world, and pit them against the 11 best batsmen in the world.

Which team would win?

Currently that would be:

1 J.H. Kallis
2 A.N. Cook
2 I.R. Bell
4 S.R. Tendulkar
5 K.C. Sangakkara
6 M.E.K. Hussey
7 I.J.L. Trott
8 S. Chanderpaul
9 K.P. Pietersen
10 R. Dravid
11 A.B. de Villiers

v

1 D.W. Steyn
2 J.M. Anderson
3 G.P. Swann
4 M. Morkel
5 S.C.J. Broad
6 Zaheer Khan
7 M.G. Johnson
8 Shakib Al Hasan
9 D.L. Vettori
10 C.T. Tremlett
11 T.T. Bresnan

Malc

The batsmen could never win, because they'd never take 20 wickets. In a Timeless Test the bowlers would win eventually.

Batsmen don't have to know how to bowl but bowlers have to know how to bat, ergo bowlers will win.

Broad, Swann and Anderson are competent batsman and that is just off the top off my head. Some of the batsmen can bowl a little but not well enough to remove the whole bowling team quickly enough.

I concur.

Depends on the wicket. Bell, pietersen, trott and tendulkar have all taken useful wickets in their time so a spinners paradise could suit them. Unlikely though.

And kallis. Didn't see him.

Depends where it is, if it is Manchester it would end as a draw.
Alternatively, if it is timeless, how could either team win?

If it was timeless, swann would suddenly pick up a mysterious injury and be unavailable for selection.

In fact, now I have a little more time, we could do this with stats. I have attached the batsmen and bowlers' averages.

To keep it simple, let's total up what both teams would get if they made exactly their average career Test runs scored (total rounded to the nearest run):

Batsmen: 579 runs scored
Bowlers: 248

Let's now look at the bowling averages. Now, this is where the bowlers have a massive advantage, because the batsmen would only pick their best four or five bowlers to bowl (as they have some filthy pie chuckers like KP and Cook), whereas the bowlers could call on ANY of their team to bowl a nice long spell. Let's say the team of bowlers all have a bowl and get one wicket each, and the batsmen pick their best five bowlers (Hussey, Kallis, ABDV, Dravid & Tendulkar) and they get two wickets each. That would mean they would concede the following number of runs per inning:

Batsmen: 402 runs conceded
Bowlers: 322

These numbers are nowhere near as disparate than the batting figures, which probably tell us that the batting team would win, strangely. I've basically come up with the opposite conclusion than I set out to do! The difference between each team's batting and bowling performances are below:

Batsmen: 177
Bowlers: -74

The difference between both teams' batting performance: 331
The difference between both teams' bowling performance: 80

If you factor in that the batting team also have a world-class wicket keeper in Sangakkara, you could probably even add a few extras onto the batsmen team's score. On the other hand, having 11 people to turn to for bowling means your bowlers stay fresher for longer. These might cancel each other out.

Also, conditions and the type of pitch would play a part as well, but I still think the batting team would win comfortably.

Unfortunately stats don't apply here really. Sure it's easy to throw a ball but a major part to bowling is not just being able to get someone out but to prevent them from knocking for six every time, you are going to end up with a comedy situation where the bowlers put the best all rounders in to bat and they get into double figures in hilariously short order.

I agree. And also, 11 bowlers isnt that huge a bowling advantage. One will have to keep, also, you will still want to bowl your guys in spells for momentum, so several are unlikely to get a significant look in unless some of your first choice get creamed repeatedly.

Also, the top 11 batsmen in the world are at that level because they can face the best bowlers in the world and score runs. Their performance with the bat isn't impeded.

If cricket were a game of who could take the most wickets in a 5 day period, the bowlers would win. However, the basic premise is who scores most runs and takes 20 wickets. The wickets is the finite target here.

It depends what game they're playing.

Except I've 'proved' that the best ten batsmen in the world are better bowlers than the ten bowlers are batsmen, and therefore would win as better all-round cricketers.

I'd argue that stats are the only thing that apply here. Anything else is just conjecture and opinion.

Who needed stats to prove that? It's obvious the batsmen would walk it.

Not to mention they're probably far better fielders.

Batsmen, I think. They can play the best bowling, but the best bowlers would in many cases still be poor batsmen against relatively poor bowling. The toss would be important - assuming the pitch is going to deteriorate, if the bowlers won the toss and conditions were any good at all for batting (or even not too good, given that they're not up against people who can get the best out of the conditions), they ought to bat first, use up as much time as possible on the basis that every hour they bat is knocking runs off the amount the batsmen can score in their first innings, and even more off their second.

That, though, is likely to be their main shot at winning. If conditions suited the bowlers first up, such that they'd put a 'normal' team in to bat and expect to roll them over, they might still fight shy of doing so to this team, because they genuinely bat all the way down, so getting the first four wickets (say) just doesn't mean as much.

In a timeless Test there would be no 'using time up' as it could technically go on forever.

Yes, but it's a case of using up time while the wicket is at its best in order to profit from it (as bowlers) when it deteriorates.