Ramachandra Guha: Who was the greatest all-rounder since Garfield Sobers?

In one of the first cricket books I read, the writer recalled being asked who was the greatest all-rounder in the history of cricket. He answered that while he couldn’t name him, he was pretty sure that the leading candidate for that honour was a left-arm bowler and a right-hand batsman who was born in the village of Kirkheaton.

I forget the title of the book, but remember the author. He was AA Thomson, who was a notorious partisan of Yorkshire cricketers. He had grown up idolising Wilfred Rhodes and George Hirst, who both played for that county, who were both born in the Yorkshire hamlet of Kirkheaton, and who both batted right-hand and bowled left-arm (with the difference that Hirst was a seamer and Rhodes a spinner). Hence that artful answer to the question of who was cricket’s greatest all-rounder. Thomson did not want to choose between Hirst and Rhodes – yet he was sure they were the only two legitimate candidates for the title.

I owe my own identification with Karnataka cricket to my early reading of AA Thomson. It was he who encouraged me to put state/county over country/nation in my hierarchy of sporting fandom. Yet, even at the time I...

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