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Cape Town - He may have been a dubious non-selection for the ICC’s one-day international team of the year, but Proteas star Hashim Amla has cracked the nod for a cricketing XI of a slightly different kind.
He was named this week in website ESPN Cricinfo’s “Most impressive beards XI” -- the only South African to make the, er, cut.
Topping the pile, naturally, was the game’s foremost historical icon WG Grace, of whom selector Steven Lynch wrote: “You can’t start anywhere else: Dr WG Grace was probably the most recognizable face in Victorian England, excepting the dear old Queen herself, and much of that was due to his prodigious whiskerage which he maintained almost throughout his adult life.
“Legend has it that the rough-diamond Aussie fast bowler Ernie Jones once whistled a bouncer right through it.”
But Amla comfortably earned the nod for team, too: “Arguably the best beard in modern-day cricket, Amla’s luxurious number is all the more striking because of the lack of hair on top of his beard. He’s a worthy successor to Grace, who was also a little thin on top in later life.”
The only other still-playing cricketer to earn selection was veteran Pakistan batsman Mohammad Yousuf, duly branded “Hashim Amla’s only serious rival for the best (beard) in world cricket at the moment”.
Another tenuous South African connection in the XI is Graham Gooch, the former England and rebel tour-leading opening batsman who had a 1980s stint at Newlands with Western Province in the old Currie Cup.
Remaining picks are Ian Botham, who was going through his temporary bearded phase during his famous Ashes series of 1981, George Bonnor, Mike Brearley, Bishan Bedi, Greg Chappell, Saeed Anwar and the only non-Test representative in the XI, Bill Frindall.
Frindall was the BBC’s “Test Match Special” radio scorer
from 1965 until his death in 2009, clearly with some impressive foliage to
accompany his pencil case.
