Over to you

A nice idea came this week from Stephen Malkin, who wrote as follows:

Hi Peakfan,

How about asking your readers to pick a Derbyshire XI from their time watching Derbyshire?

I have been a member since 1983, although I was first taken by my father to watch Derbyshire v Gloucestershire at Burton-on-Trent in 1969, the first year of the Sunday League, 

Including only one overseas player, my team would be: K Barnett, P Bowler, J Morris, C Adams, D Jones, D Cork, G Miller, P De Freitas, K Krikken, K Dean, D Malcolm. 

This would be a team to win the County Championship, my only reservation that there isn’t a left handed batsman. They might not get on, but as was shown in 1996 on the field they had the utmost respect for each other. If Dean Jones had been a bit more ruthless towards the end of that season, particularly the game away against Somerset, they would have won the league. 

Of my team the openers record speaks for itself KB in my opinion Derbyshire’s greatest ever player John Morris on his day the finest English batsman of the modern era to play for Derbyshire ,Chris Adams again on his day not far behind. Dean Jones to drive them on with his motivation as well as being a great batsman, the three all rounders all played Test cricket for England with around  3000 first class wickets between them. Krikk was unorthodox and brilliant, some of his catches standing goalkeeper style  to the quicks were unbelievable. Kevin Dean had the rare ability as a left arm bowler to move the ball very late both ways. 

I picked Devon over Ole Mortensen because Devon was that rare bowler who got better with age at 35 he was twice the bowler he was at 25 with very little reduction in pace. This bowling attack had enough variety to bowl sides out on most pitches especially with Jones getting behind them and driving them on.

That's a nice idea, Stephen. While recognising that younger readers will have less options, I would love to see and publish your ideas. Please email them to peakfan36@yahoo.co.uk

Mine will be up in the coming days.