FRANK TYSON was the fastest; Fred Trueman was first to 300 wickets and had the most glorious action; Bob Willis did not but eventually took even more; Alec Bedser was the finest exponent of cut and swerve; Brian Statham was the straightest; John Snow the most rhythmical and on his day the meanest. There have been other outstanding fast and fast-medium bowlers for England since 1953 and in Darren Gough and Andrew Caddick we now have two who could easily be underestimated, but this is the shortlist and to whittle it down to two is not much easier than it must have been facing Tyson downwind in Sydney in 1954.

Tyson's six for 85 in the second innings of that match, after four for 45 in the first, was a performance that famously helped to turn the series. England had lost the opening game and then been bowled out for 154 at the start of the second. There has never been much doubt expressed by those who witnessed events at close quarters on the last day of the match that Tyson, with Statham giving nothing away as he ran into the gale at the other end, bowled faster than anyone before or since. Bill Edrich used to say it and he spoke as one who had been knocked unconscious before the war by a ball from the towering Ken Farnes. Richie Benaud, after all the cricket he has seen, still says it, too.

In a bouncer-happy age in which helmets have become compulsory for children, it is worth pointing out that Peter May, another who used to attest to Tyson's pace at his brief peak, always stressed that, on that occasion, any intimidation the Australians felt came from speed alone. He did not bowl any bouncers. Tyson had an even more spectacular analysis of seven for 27 in the next match, but, in the end, this very strong (and very intelligent) man could not sustain such speed match after match without injuries. Seventy-six wickets at a cost of only 18 each from his 17 Tests shows what he might have done with the physiological knowhow that assists fast bowlers now.

It is insufficient evidence, however, on which to place him above the three greater bowlers with whom he played in those heady days of the 1950s. Bedser, the human oak tree, having lost good years to the war, was the first of them: the second was Maurice Tate. Skilful use of his huge hands, a strength that has endured into old age, and a big heart combined to make him the one man who regularly troubled Don Bradman.

The 39 wickets he took in the Ashes series of 1953 took his tally in this and the previous rubber in Australia to 69, at a cost of 16 each. By 1955, however, he was surplus to requirements, retiring with the then Test record of 236 wickets but giving way to the best crop of young fast bowlers the country has ever had.

England's opening pairs in five dramatic matches against South Africa that season were, respectively, Statham and Tyson, Statham and Trueman, Bedser and Tyson, Statham and Peter Loader and Statham and Trevor Bailey. (It is not untypical that the opposition saw no need to alter their own formidable pairing of Neil Adcock and Peter Heine until Adcock was injured before the final Test.) As with Denis Compton, the fact is that at the starting point for this hypothetical selection Bedser was on the brow of the hill and soon over it. The candidates therefore narrow to Trueman, Statham, Snow and Willis.

Tom Graveney played a lot of cricket with the first three, but when, after Alf Gover's memorial service a few months ago I asked him to separate them, he was unable to do so. He was full of praise for all three, said that Statham had given him more trouble personally than Trueman and added that, on his day, Snow was as good as anyone. There was a caveat: "The mood had to be right."

Perhaps this must count against Snow, although when his heart was in a cause and, no less important, the rhythm was such as to make the most of his wiry frame in an action that depended more than most on timing, he was a mean bowler, quick to spot a batsman's weakness and to harry him until he was gone. He took a wicket every 59 balls in Test cricket, a rate bettered only in this exalted group by Trueman (40) and Willis (53). (Bedser bowled 67 balls for each of his wickets, but he conceded fewer runs per hundred balls than any of them: 36.) The phenomenally accurate Statham's "economy" rate was 38, Willis's 47, Snow's 44 and Trueman's 43. But Trueman took his wickets at 21, Statham at 24, Willis at 25 and Snow at 26. By comparison, Gough's wickets have cost 27 and he has conceded a somewhat profligate 54 runs per 100 balls, but his strike rate of a wicket every 50 balls is bettered only by Trueman. Gough has a fine action, unquenchable spirit and lacks only height.

All the evidence, both statistical and anecdotal, points to Trueman as the first choice to take the new ball. He was a tearaway in his Yorkshire youth, too quick for some of the India batsmen when he first burst on the international stage. When one of them, H. R. Adhikari, returned to England as manager many years later, Trueman greeted him with: "Hello, Colonel. Nice to see you've got some colour back since I saw you last." But the bluster was only one aspect of a great bowler with a sturdy frame built for hard work, an ideal action for delivering late outswingers, and a shrewd mind. At Headingley, in the third Test against Australia in 1961, he took five for 58 at his fastest in the first innings, then had a spell of six for six bowling medium-pace off-cutters in the second.

Willis produced his own most famous spell on the same Headingley turf in 1981. Like Snow, he was formidable when the mood was right and against Australia it usually was. He may have run to the stumps like a crane-fly, but he was genuinely fast and on bouncy pitches his bounce was horribly awkward. He, too, had a shrewd cricketing brain and a fiercely independent approach to life and to his career.

"Gentleman George" Statham was more like Bedser: a solid, honest, reliable professional. He was the most supple of English fast bowlers, sufficiently double-jointed to be able to put his hands to the bottom of his back and pull off his sweater in one easy movement as he walked up to bowl another over. He did not swing the ball much, but he hit the seam and nipped it both ways at a pace comparable with all but the very quickest. In today's terms, he was a McGrath rather than a Lee, but plenty fast enough and always making the batsman play.

If this had been a postwar XI, as opposed to one picked from my starting-point of midsummer 1953, Bedser would, like Compton, have been a certain selection. But Statham shone for longer. Having partnered Tyson, Statham was always associated with Trueman thereafter: there seems no reason to separate them now.

CMJ is selecting the greatest England and Rest of the World XIs from the players he has watched over the past half-century. In the ultimate cricketing fantasy, the teams will square up in a five-match series, simulated by www.wisden.com, on a variety of grounds chosen by CMJ to test their talents to the full. Reports of the matches will start in The Times on Monday, July 29.