All-time Test XI described by cricketing quotes

Opening batsmen and middle order

The Master Blaster is at Number 3 in this batting line-up

#1 Sir Jack Hobbs

"On any type of wicket, he was the best batsman in my experience. He never looked like getting out and he was just the same whether he made 100 or 0." - H Strudwick

#2 Sir Donald Bradman

"Much of his upbringing was spent playing out by the back of the house, on his own, hitting a golf ball against a water tank with a single stump. When he joined the higher ranks at a young age, he took with him a single-mindedness and a natural naivete. He only wanted to bat."

"And the only way he knew how to do that was to trust his conditioning, his beliefs and his thoughts. No innings meant more than the one he was about to play, no matter the size of the last score he had made. Unemotionally, he moved from one match to the next with a consistent hunger to express his art. It was unrivalled thinking." - M Crowe.

#3 Sachin Tendulkar

"Cricket is not just about performance. It's also about life. It's about how you leave an imprint on the young: the imprint of integrity, of honesty and of gratitude. Sachin Tendulkar lived this quality all his life and he shared it with us all, as only he could."

"It can then be said, without hesitation or demurring, that the greatest cricketer of the last 20 years is that man who sailed away with every record and every heart, due to the love of a father, and of a game that fulfilled his soul. Incredible love is what Sachin had for cricket, and cricket for Sachin. Nothing but sheer love abounded. And gratitude." - M Nicholas

#4 Brian Lara

"In in the heat of a torrid Brett Lee spell - Lara gets fed up of turning himself into an inverted airborne "C" against Lee's bouncers, looks around the field and tells his partner: "Listen, I'm going to hit him in front of square. When they move the fielder, I'm going to hit him a little more in front. And then I'm going to hit him behind square." That innings he calculated that you need to hit X amount of fours - I think he had worked out that he needed 18 or 20 boundaries to win the game. Afterwards, I look up the numbers - BC Lara, 4s 19, 6s 1. Can there have been a purer distillation of breadth of one man's genius? This was peak, Lara." - R Bhattacharya