Greg is there at his spot - No. 4!!!! - I am a fan of him man, the most complete batsman of 1970s. Arguably, he was better Test batsman of 1970s than Viv. His career stats doesn’t include his best 1500 runs at 5 hundreds, scored at 57, against the combination of worlds best two attacks. One of the best ever double hundreds in cricket was played by Greg : 246 (?) at WSC, after fielding for 10 hours and he was suffering from fever, that whole day, didn’t eat anything. Apart from losing his best 2 years to WSC (it started when he was 29), he had issues with ACB and his allergy that cost him around 35-38 Tests during his prime, otherwise guy could have been the first batsman to score 10K Test runs at close to 60 with like 35+ hundreds.
Ian Chappell, shouldn’t be considered for 1970s team - he is one of those players whose career prime was splited into two decades - it started around 1967, ended by 1975 (he actually retired at 32 after 1975 Ashes summer; had issues with Bradman who was looking to sack him, IC didn’t give him the chance - handed the resignation to Bradman with a beer at other hand). I’ll take Ian for the team of 1960s, but not 1970s - he was among world’s top 4 batsmen between 1967 to 1971, and competition of spots for 1960s was much less (Kanhai, GPollock, IC & Sobers are certain for 3 to 6; Simpson also almost certain for one opening slot, other one position can be debated).
Before Wasim, ** Bedi was probably the greatest ever left arm bowler (bowler, not spinner), though English cricket media might not agree - they had Verity & Underwood, while Aussies had Davidson. He’ll make my AT Test squad of 16, if a dedicated SLAO spinner is picked. He was very much original- classical action, conventional skills and extremely intelligent. Underwood has better stats, but he was a bit condition dependent spinner, brilliant on wet wickets & his Captains often didn’t use him on unfavourable conditions, preserving his stats. BSB played as the lead bowler of his team and had to bowl lots of overs in first innings as well.
Holding’s peak was between 1979 to 1983-4 - apart from that one Oval Test in 1976, next great thing from him I can recall is kicking wickets in NZ in 1979. He also lost his fastest two years to WSC - I won’t take him for 1970s squads ahead of Imran or Hadlee. By 1977, Imran was accomplished fast bowler who had great tours of the best two teams that time - AUS & WIN; then in India as well. He missed couple of years for WSC and didn’t tour England in 1978, hence his 1970s career isn’t that glorified, but that one Test at SCG should be enough!!!!! That was probably the greatest upset in Test cricket before Bobby Mughabe’s boys beat Imran’s successors.
