Eleven Graemes in a Dressing Room

In keeping with the So You Think You Can Select spirit of the times, I give you this: an XI of Graemes (and Grahams).

Apologies, faint ones, to Graham Yallop, who might have slunk into a few folks’ teams at number five. Sorry, too, to Graham ‘Jock’ Edwards, of Central Districts and New Zealand, outfoxed for the keeper’s gloves by a man named Fowler. No apologies for my 12th man – for he was the equal of three 12th men – the late Graham Roope. “Wherever,” wrote Mike Selvey, “it was anticipated might be the likeliest place for a catch, there Roope would be found.”

THE GRAEMES 1 Graeme Smith (SA, capt) 2 Graham Gooch (Eng) 3 Graeme Hick (Eng) 4 Graeme Pollock (SA) 5 Graeme Wood (Aus) 6 Graham Thorpe (Eng) 7 Graeme Fowler (Eng, wk) 8 Graeme Swann (Eng) 9 Graeme Labrooy (SL) 10 Graham McKenzie (Aus) 11 Graham Dilley (Eng) 12th man Graham Roope (Eng)

Ironies abounded in the cricketing lifetime of my number five batsman. I liked the one about how Wood was dismissed on first-class debut by Selvey – finest of this past decade or two’s big-match correspondents – only for Wood himself to be forever painted from a palette of little-man adjectives.

Words like enigmatic. Impetuous. Inconsistent. Determined. Taciturn. In one brief Wood portrait in his Complete Who’s Who of Test Cricketers, Christopher Martin-Jenkins uses “taciturn” twice.

Maybe the name had something to do with it. For a few enigmatic, inconsistent and taciturn types lurk among the Graemes (and Grahams) above.

It’s a handy line-up, though, with a decent attack, and rich in batsmen of contrasting tempos.

Could it be beaten? And if so by whom? By The Bills, Freds, Wallys, Wasims, Mohammads, Dennises or Alans? Arguments and alternative Favourite Name XIs are welcome in the comments below.