[Gowza]

i think imran batting at #6 in an all time team makes the batting a bit weak, especially with bari batting at #7....if sangakkara doesn't make it as the #3 he should make it as the keeper imo. shakib is a great option even in an all time team because he can be a great #7/8/9 and is also a quality spinner. with shakib in the team and imran then you can have terrific depth in the batting and a bowling attack as good as any.

if you have sanga as your keeper then he can bat at #6, he averages 40+ as a keeper in 81 innings, 7 centuries, 11 half centuries. sanga playing as keeper in tests batted at #3 most of the time and actually averaged over 44 batting at #3 while keeping wicket so although he might not have been the best of the best glovemen i think his keeping skills were pretty good and his batting far outweighs any improvement on glovework that bari offered.

so your lower order would look like this:

1
2
3
4
5
6 sangakkara
7 shakib/imran
8 imran/imran
9 wasim
10 waqar
11 murali

in that you get a stronger #6 than imran, you're #7 is exceptionally good for a #7, you're #8 is probably the best #8 ever, you have wasim at #9 which would probably mean you have the best #9 ever. then bowling wise you get 3 all time great pacemen, one of the greatest spinners ever and another spinner who's right up there.

i do see the logic in having 2 all time great spinners but having imran at #6 weakens the batting a lot, it's alright for a normal XI to have your #6 average 37 but in an all time team it's a bit behind par imo. plus bari being in there is a huge weakness in the batting to, he's basically a #10/#11 in quality. murali, qadir and waqar are pretty much #10s/#11s so you're basically only batting down to #7 akram would bat at #7 in that team imo then bari/waqar/qadir/murali). the batting isn't there.

plus compare shakib's bowling numbers to qadir's. qadir averages worse than shakib, their economys are about similar, but shakib has a much better strike rate. shakib also gets 3.7 wickets a match to qadir's 3.5, not to much difference there but remember shakib often doesn't get a 2nd innings to bowl in, and if he did you'd expect that wickets per match stat to go up.