England's best ever one-day XI: Who makes the cut?

SIMON HUGHES: I sat down with Test Match Special’s Simon Mann and one of England’s most reliable one-day cricketers, John Emburey, to discuss it. After an hour of debate - recorded on the latest podcast - we came up with our best XI.

^{James Anderson (left), Kevin Pietersen (top right) and Jos Buttler}

Is this intimidating group of white-ball players England’s best ever one-day side?

They are hugely entertaining and impressively successful - 16 wins and only four losses in the last 12 months with eight totals of over 300 in that time and a highly-charged overall run rate of 6.37 per over.

But two of those losses were in what you might call ‘one-off’ games (against Pakistan in the Champions Trophy semi-final and this month against Scotland).

This current side haven’t reached a global final - yet. And how many of the recent Aussie-bashers would make it into England’s all-time one-day team?

I sat down with Test Match Special’s Simon Mann and one of England’s most reliable one-day cricketers, John Emburey, to discuss it.  

^{Eoin Morgan: In or out?}

After an hour of debate - recorded on the latest podcast - we came up with our best XI.

There was general agreement on six of the team - although it was only unequivocal on three; Jos Buttler, Jonny Bairstow and Adil Rashid - and a little bit of compromise on the rest.

Emburey didn’t have Kevin Pietersen in his side until he realised it was a major oversight. There was an extended debate over whether England’s leading one-day run scorer, Eoin Morgan, and wicket-taker, James Anderson, made it into the team.  

It's not an exact science, of course, and it's always hard to compare players from different eras. Our criteria was not strike rates or averages but judging which players were dominant in their eras and could be envisaged to win matches under any playing conditions in any country, and crucially using the white Kookaburra ball which, as we all know, rarely benefits traditional swing and seam bowlers. 

Our XI is revealed at the end of the podcast.

We’d like to see if our choices tally with the public vote so please email your best ever England one-day team to website@thecricketer.com or comment on the bottom of this article and we’ll collate the choices and post the results this time next week.