THE inevitable has happened. After the series of wonderful Test matches between the best England and Rest of the World teams of the past half-century, invitations have been received for the best composite XI from the two teams to take on further challenges.

The traditional request for a match or matches to be played against Mars has been rejected by the authorities because, in the words of their statement yesterday: "We are not convinced that, despite the rapid development of the game among citizens of this rapidly expanding society, their cricket has yet advanced to the stage where this would be a viable proposition.

"We are also concerned that, despite the willingness of the Martian Cricket Council (MCC) to become a full member of the ICC, certain different interpretations of the laws might easily lead to disturbances. Any hostility between players or spectators would, we feel, be totally alien to the spirit of cricket. So far as we are aware there has never been any in the game."

A single challenge match at Lord's in June, however, has been received from a composite World XI chosen from those who played their best Test cricket between 1877 and 1952. It has been accepted and I have been asked to nominate the two teams. I am honoured but I tackle the task with due humility. For the post 1953 team I was granted permission to choose one or more players from outside the England and Rest of the World XIs published over the past fortnight if I felt that anyone who lost his best years to the war might therefore be unfairly excluded from both teams.

It is still a tough decision. Knowing the batting to come, I am going to settle for a good start if possible, as opposed to the sort of rollicking one that Barry Richards and Graham Gooch might provide. The choice therefore falls upon Len Hutton and Sunil Gavaskar.

At three, four and five I initially preferred Viv Richards, Sachin Tendulkar and Peter May to Ted Dexter, Brian Lara and Colin Cowdrey, not to mention all the great players rejected in the first instance.

All three were so good, so dominant that results in their time tended to depend on whether they scored runs. This, however, is where the altered criterion came into play. I now feel I can include Denis Compton, one of the great geniuses of batting, in May's place. I still have a conscience about Allan Border and I do not like leaving Lara out, but there it is.

Garry Sobers has to be preferred to Ian Botham (and all the other mighty alternatives) as the all-rounder and Alan Knott to Adam Gilchrist as wicketkeeper, if only because the latter is still at an early stage of a career that could easily become so glittering as to make him the automatic choice a few years on. Two other contemporaries, Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan, get the vote ahead of Derek Underwood and Jim Laker, and the two England fast bowlers, plus Alec Bedser, reluctantly overlooked again, also have to give way to Malcolm Marshall and Dennis Lillee. The resultant XI has just about everything.

It will need to: ranged against them will be two of the greatest opening batsmen of all time, Jack Hobbs and W. G. Grace. The easiest choice follows: D. G. Bradman at No 3, following whom one might well ask whether it much matters who is chosen. Lest anyone has forgotten, he would have averaged better than 100 in Test cricket if he had not failed to spot Eric Hollies's googly at the Oval in his final innings in 1948.

Who better to follow the Don than the man given the epithet "the black Bradman"? George Headley played in only 22 Test matches in a period before West Indies played much Test cricket. He was supremely good, however, scoring ten centuries in those games and averaging 60.

In his first series, against England in the Caribbean (having made 211 when still a teenager against the MCC touring team in 1928), he scored 176 in the first Test, 114 and 112 in the third at Georgetown and 223 in the fourth (and last) in his native Kingston. To follow Headley at five comes no less a player, the most majestic of all the strokeplayers that England have produced, the incomparable Walter Hammond.

Of his 167 first-class hundreds, 36 were of 200 or more. He was also a more than useful seam bowler and a brilliant slip fielder.

The all-rounder was the hardest decision. Warwick Armstrong, the "Big Ship", came strongly into the reckoning and so did the graceful Frank Woolley, whose prolific all-round figures will never be matched. Knowing, however, who my slow bowlers would be, the choice came down to someone who bowled above medium pace and I settled for Jack Gregory ahead of the dashing F. S. Jackson or Learie Constantine. Gregory's career was cut short by injury and Sammy Woods was among the obvious alternatives, but Gregory was so fast as to frighten batsmen, so powerful a left-handed hitter that he created records for fast scoring, and a superb fielder anywhere.

If someone protests that Jackson was the better batsman (with five hundreds in only 20 Tests, of course he was) I hasten to reassure them that at seven I have a choice between Les Ames and H. B. (Jock) Cameron as the wicketkeeper and, as the first of the spinners, I have Wilfred Rhodes, who started as a tailender for England but became Hobbs's opening partner.

Don Tallon, a good enough player to make Sheffield Shield hundreds, obviously has a case to be the wicketkeeper, as does Bert Oldfield, but Ames is the only wicketkeeper to have scored a hundred first-class hundreds. He kept for England through most of the 1930s but I have settled for Cameron, a classical wicketkeeper whose stumpings were likened to someone flicking ash off his cigarette and a batsman who made more than 1,000 runs on the 1929 tour of England and six years later struck 90 out of 126 in 105 minutes at Lord's to help his country to a maiden Test victory in England.

As a bowler, Rhodes was almost the original master of flight. His 4,187 first-class wickets and almost 40,000 runs are the stuff of legend. His partner, to no one's surprise surely, is Bill O'Reilly, the Tiger, in the view of Bradman and many others the greatest leg-spinner of all and certainly the most hostile. The piece he writes on the match for his Australian newspaper will be strongly opinionated and certainly not ghosted.

For the opening attack I go back to the early days. S. F. Barnes and Fred Spofforth were colossal figures, instilling chilly awe in all who played against them. Of course pitches were different but Barnes took 189 wickets in 27 Tests at 16 runs each and the demon Spofforth's 14 wickets for 90 at the Oval in 1882 in effect gave birth to the Ashes.

HOW THE ALL-TIME GREATS LINE UP

PRE-1953 WORLD XI

W. G. Grace (Eng)
Jack Hobbs (Eng)
Don Bradman (Aus, captain)
George Headley (WI)
Wally Hammond (Eng)
Jack Gregory (Aus)
Jock Cameron (SA)
Wilfred Rhodes (Eng)
Bill O'Reilly (Aus)
Fred Spofforth (Aus)
Sydney Barnes (Eng)

POST-1953 WORLD XI

Len Hutton (Eng, captain)
Sunil Gavaskar (India)
Viv Richards (WI)
Sachin Tendulkar (India)
Denis Compton (Eng)
Garry Sobers (WI)
Alan Knott (Eng)
Malcolm Marshall (WI)
Shane Warne (Aus)
Dennis Lillee (Aus)
Muttiah Muralitharan (SL)