ALL-ROUNDERS are the most valuable of all cricketers. In the era of one-day cricket, no side is complete without at least two, and in two-innings cricket a man whose batting average is higher than his bowling is potentially a priceless asset.

Not many England players since 1953 have truly been worth their place both as a batsman and a bowler. Add his captaincy to the equation and Ray Illingworth came close, perhaps, but the only serious candidates are Trevor Bailey, Tony Greig and Ian Botham.

The field for the Rest of the World team is acres wider. At no previous period of the game has there been such a galaxy of talent as is represented by the post-Coronation crop of Keith Miller, Richie Benaud, Alan Davidson, Garry Sobers, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee, Mike Procter, Chris Cairns and Jacques Kallis. Abdul Razzaq, too, has the ability and temperament to be mentioned in the same breath.

There is little mystery about the decisions to be taken. Nevertheless, to make them is to feel much as arbitrators and judges as Pontius Pilate must have done when sending down innocent men. Take any six of this group, put them in to bat or on to bowl in any order, give them a wicketkeeper, a couple of spinners for variety and two opening batsmen to pave the way, and who else, frankly, would you want?

Perhaps I exaggerate in one or two cases. Benaud, even more than Illingworth, deserves his astute and enterprising captaincy to be included in the mixture that made him a great all-round asset for Australia, but his batting would not have earned him a place by itself had he not also been one of the great leg spin bowlers, whose action was close to perfection. Davidson, too, broad shouldered, match-winning, left-arm swing bowler and brilliant fielder though he was, only occasionally excelled as a batsman in the highest company (five fifties in 44 Tests).

There are no such doubts about Miller, who could still swing any match, with bat or ball, for some years after 1953. By then he had played the most glorious innings of his colourful career, spreading joy to thousands at Lord's by hitting 185 in 165 minutes in one of the Victory Tests of 1945 within hours of touching down after one of his night-time journeys as a fighter pilot.

He hit seven sixes on that occasion and his athletic grace, good looks and joie de vivre made him a cynosure in almost every female eye. As a bowler he was a man of moods, sometimes quicker than Ray Lindwall, often irresistible. He took his 170 Test wickets at 22 and averaged 36 as a batsman.

Let us leave Sobers for a moment and consider the extraordinary era during which Imran, Kapil Dev and Hadlee vied with Botham to be the best all-rounder in the world. Hadlee made 15 Test fifties for New Zealand, often thrilling and spectacular ones, and two hundreds, but an average of 27 tells the truth that in Test company he was not a true all-rounder. As one of the greatest bowling artists of them all, he will be considered again for one of the fast-bowling places.

There is no doubting the all-round credentials of Kapil Dev or Imran. Kapil Dev was certainly capable of holding down a regular batting place had he not been obliged to carry the India attack tirelessly for so long. One has only to recall two of his innings in England to establish the point. At Tunbridge Wells on a juicy pitch in the 1983 World Cup, India were ten for four when he came in to bat against Zimbabwe. Not long afterwards they were 17 for five, then 78 for seven. Kapil Dev scored 175, peppering the rhododendrons with sixes, and India went on to win both that match and the World Cup under his captaincy. Given the subsequent Indian love-affair (or enduring marriage) with one-day cricket, it was an innings that changed the course of history.

At Lord's in 1990, when India were nine wickets down needing 24 to make England bat again, Kapil Dev's response was to drive four successive balls from Eddie Hemmings for six, every stroke cleanly hit. Kapil Dev the bowler finished with 434 wickets from his 131 games, his classical action both defying the trend towards front-on delivery and enabling him to keep fit even when playing some county cricket and 225 one-day internationals.

Procter was potentially an even greater cricketer, an explosive bowler and dynamic, classical batsman, but Imran had more opportunity to display his prowess on the grand stage. As with Miller, there were days when his heart was not in it, but when it was he was magnificent. Here was another heart-throb and another natural athlete with a regal air who swung the ball at searing pace and hit it with the power of a kicking horse.

He would seize the moment. At Sydney as a young man in 1976-77, his hostility and his 12 wickets for 165 enabled Pakistan to win a Test on Australian soil for the first time. At Headingley in 1987, his ten for 73 in the match, and seven for 40 in the second innings, overwhelmed England. He made sure the series was subsequently won by hitting a magisterial 118 in the last Test, at the Oval. He seemed to lead Pakistan as of right, even when he was not the official captain.

IF IMRAN, like Curzon, was a most superior person, he and all who have followed must give the all-rounder's palm to Sobers. With Sir Garry, above all, it was the style as much as the substance.

Never was there a more natural cricketer. When he drove, even sometimes when he pulled, the bat went through 360 degrees. He saw the ball so early there was time for it to do so.

Bowling his left-arm quick stuff, his action was a joy, the eyes looking at the batsman behind a right-arm flung high, before a full wheel of the body. He could bamboozle with the chinaman or spin it viciously with the fingers, and to Lance Gibbs he was as sharp round the corner at backward short leg as Tony Lock once was for Jim Laker. He was not a great captain and his 235 Test wickets cost 34 each, but no one has got so many wickets and at the same time averaged as high as 57 with the bat. So, Sobers it must be.

And it must be Botham, too. If you wanted someone to bat for your life, Bailey was your man: the barnacle, the most obdurate stonewaller since Dick Barlow in the 19th century, utterly reliable when the going was tough. He was, too, a fast-medium bowler of high quality and a fine fielder.

Although he was more aggressive and certainly more impulsive, Greig was in some ways similar: he thrived on challenges. He met the fire of Lillee and Thomson with brimstone in Brisbane in 1974-75; lost no pride even when West Indies made him eat his words in 1976; and was arguably as good as Botham at second slip - which is to say superb.

Greig was another born to lead and although he was probably at his best on the way up, switching from fast-medium seamers to off breaks to inspire England to victory in Trinidad in 1973-74, he was promising well as captain until Kerry Packer called, not least with his courageous century at Calcutta in 1976-77 when he was ill and conditions suited India's spinners.

Botham, to some extent, cashed in on the absence of many fine players during two years of World Series Cricket, but such prodigious talent allied to rare physical strength would have pushed its way past all barriers anyway.

Until his back pains started and his early looseness went, he was a quite outstanding fast swing bowler. His innings at Headingley and Old Trafford in 1981 are the stuff of legend, his slip-catching was consistently good, often brilliant, and, through all the vicissitudes, his final figures - 14 Test hundreds and 383 wickets at 28 - settle all arguments.