Following on from my post this morning naming my Australian XI derived from players who have played less than 5 test matches (but who have played at least 1), I have given some consideration to who would by in a World XI based on the same criteria.  This exercise is a large one and I found myself drawn to players that I knew the stories of and players whose statistics just made them impossible to resist.

Here is my World XI and their respective first class records:

Barry Richards (SA)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Wickets	Average	5fors
4	339	28358	54.74	80	77	37.48	1

Tim Curtis (Eng)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Wickets	Average	5fors
5	339	20832	40.68	43	14	58.07	0

Kim Barnett (Eng)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Wickets	Average	5fors
4	479	28593	40.38	61	188	37.8	3

Stuart Law (Aus)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Wickets	Average	5fors
1	367	27080	50.52	79	83	51.03	1

H H Kanitkar (Ind)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Wickets	Average	5fors
2	146	10400	52.26	33	74	47.91	0

Rikki Clarke (Eng)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Wickets	Average	5fors
2	164	7880	35.49	16	264	34.43	2

Warren Hegg (Eng)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Catches	Stumpings
2	348	11302	27.9	7	857	94

Andre Adams (NZ)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Wickets	Average	5fors
1	160	4421	22.44	3	645	23.47	31

Nilesh Kulkarni (Ind)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Wickets	Average	5fors
3	101	860	12.11	0	357	24.89	24

Neil Mallender (Eng)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Wickets	Average	5fors
2	345	4709	17.18	1	937	26.31	36

Ottis Gibson (WI)

Tests	Games	Runs	Average	100s	Wickets	Average	5fors
2	177	5604	24.25	2	659	27.79	28

This has been an interesting exercise filled with hard luck stories and selection abominations whilst highlighting that for some players an excellent first class career does not make a test career.

The story of Barry Richards is well known: we can only be left to wonder what he would have done to the records of the game if he had not have been caught up in the apartheid ban.

Neil Mallender is a must pick for this team: having taken 5/50 on debut and 8 wickets in total in his first test match he was only given one more test match before being discarded by the English selectors never to be picked again.  The great Richie Benaud is on record as describing this act of lunacy as an absolute disgrace.

Entirely subjectively, this is my World XI. I am sure you will have a different team.  Please let me know what you think either in the comments to this blog OR on twitter @shumpty77.