Whenever cricket fans are bored, they start creating ideal XIs. This gets boring after a while, so more variations are considered such as left-handed and right-handed XIs, names starting with S and so on.
So here we have a “Singh is King” XI which should be better than the Kings XI. The criteria here is that a player should have played in at least one Test and should have Singh as a surname or middle name. In suggested batting order:
1) Navjot Singh Sidhu
2) Chetan Pratap Singh Chauhan
3) Hanumant Singh
4) A.G. Kripal Singh
5) Yuvraj Singh
6) Yajurvindra Singh
7) Mahendra Singh Dhoni
8) Harbhajan Singh
9) Balwinder Singh Sandhu
10) L. Amar Singh
11) Bishen Singh Bedi
Reserves: Robin Singh (sr), R.P. Singh, Gursharan Singh, Maninder Singh, and finally Mudhsuden Singh Panesar.
One may say that the middle order is a bit weak but Nos 7 and 8 should provide enough backup (even No 8 has two test centuries). One might argue that Robin Singh is not a good enough bowler for Tests, but he could be included for his ODI batting so he could replace Sandhu though this would weaken the bowling.
Although Ranjitsinhji and Duleepsinhji are sometimes spelt as Singh (like their Saurashtran relative Yajurvindra), cricket literature almost invariably uses the former variant.
Not everyone here wears a turban, but it would be prudent not to make Santa-Banta jokes nearby. One could possibly construct another list consisting of turbaned players alone, though one may not be able to find all eleven who were Test players.
This team should generally beat Afghanistan or Ireland (or Zimbabwe or Bangladesh on an off day).
Tail piece: the movie title “Singh is Kinng” is said to have been taken from the back of a truck.
abn397 