The good, the bad and the indifferent

It's still very cold up here today and it is natural that thoughts turn to warm summer days and cricketing fantasies when a trip to the garden shed leaves you feeling like Soldier Oates about to leave Captain Scott's tent.
Here's a few names for you:

Geoff Boycott
Saeed Anwar
Justin Langer
Jacques Rudolph
Allan Lamb
Mohammad Yousuf
Mahela Jayawardena
James Hopes
Dennis Lillee
Garth Le Roux

Throw in a wicket keeper - go on then, Bob Taylor will do - and that's a pretty decent team of players who could have played for Derbyshire, but for injury and circumstance. A little light in bowling, but plenty of batting talent in there.

Boycott almost moved from Yorkshire in the midst of the troubled period when John Hampshire and Phil Sharpe moved south. In the end he stayed put and we can only imagine what might have happened had Boycs joined our flimsy batting line up of the time. Many of the others were prevented from joining by injury, most notably Dennis Lillee, who would have been a real coup had he not sustained a stress fracture of the back in the early 1970's. Le Roux and Lamb played in the same Second XI as Peter Kirsten and while no one would argue about the choice of the dapper Kirsten, we could have had Lamb as well with his English passport. Le Roux went on to be a force for Sussex and in Packer cricket and would have been another strong asset in other circumstances.

Then of course, there's ten players who did play for us but with questionable success.

Michael Slater
Travis Birt
Mohammad Kaif
Clive Inman
Lawrence Rowe
Shahid Afridi
Jon Moss
Chris Harris
Srinivas Venkataraghavan
Daren Powell

Most of them had their days of success, but none were frequent enough to warrant the signing costs. Rowe was a batsman of brilliance, but had so many ailments in his time at Derby that he could have been sponsored by the NHS. Slater and Birt were that rare beast, the relatively unsuccessful Australian. Both had concentration problems and were largely unfulfilled talents at County level. Inman was a Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) but qualified through years at Leicestershire, where he was a fine player. His eyes had gone by the time we signed him, however. Afridi played every game as a T20 slog, Moss was just an average player and Harris was a strange, short term and short sighted signing, just like Powell. Kaif was signed for potential that was never realised, while Venkat was a fine bowler we didn't need at the time. He got plenty of wickets, but often at cost at a time when we desperately needed a batsman of world class. Very, very fine bowler at the wrong time.

Ah well. Never end on a disappointment. Think of these fellas at their peak and the glow will sustain you on your next trip outside on these cold days.

John Wright
Chris Rogers
Eddie Barlow
Peter Kirsten
Mohammad Azharuddin
Dean Jones
Adrian Kuiper
Michael Holding
Ian Bishop
Ole Mortensen

I'd add Venkat to THAT side for balance and take on the world.
No, make that Mars. With Barlow as skipper we would beat them all.