50 Best England Test Cricketers Since 1984 (and 50 less good ones)

A fun list to put together. The first test match I watched was the second test of the 1984 series vs the West Indies. Anyone who's played a test match for England at all since then is considered (apart from Bob Willis and Derek Randall, who played their last games in that series). Only test match performance is considered.

Looking through the full list of every single player, I remembered, or barely remembered, so very many, particularly in the late 80s and early 90s, who came and went. For balance and a bit of fun, I've added 50 of them, who cast no shadow on test cricket (some of them were rather good cricketers, it was all just a total shambles of selection and retention. And some are actually notorious due to the very brevity of their test career - the likes of Mark Lathwell and Darren Pattinson).

There's not that much more to say - current ones are only up to this point, so Stokes and Root will obviously be higher soon. Only in English cricket could there be 5 Grahams/Graemes in a list of 50 people.

The best

1. Ian Botham
2. Alastair Cook
3. James Anderson
4. Stuart Broad
5. David Gower
6. Kevin Pietersen
7. Graham Gooch
8. Andrew Flintoff
9. Andrew Strauss
10. Michael Vaughan
11. Joe Root
12. Alex Stewart
13. Graeme Swann
14. Graham Thorpe
15. Darren Gough
16. Mike Atherton
17. Ian Bell
18. Angus Fraser
19. Nasser Hussain
20. Matthew Hoggard
21. Andrew Caddick
22. Robin Smith
23. Marcus Trescothick
24. Matthew Prior
25. Paul Collingwood
26. Steve Harmison
27. Jonathan Trott
28. Allan Lamb
29. Mike Gatting
30. Ben Stokes
31. Jack Russell
32. Dominic Cork
33. Mark Butcher
34. Graham Dilley
35. Monty Panesar
36. John Emburey
37. Jonny Bairstow
38. Tim Bresnan
39. Phil DeFreitas
40. Steve Finn
41. Moeen Ali
42. Graeme Hick
43. Ryan Sidebottom
44. Phil Edmonds
45. Phil Tufnell
46. Devon Malcolm
47. Chris Broad
48. Ashley Giles
49. Chris Woakes
50. Chris Lewis

Not the best

• Andy Lloyd
• Paul Terry
• Arnie Sidebottom
• David Smith
• Greg Thomas
• Mark Benson
• Neal Radford
• James Whitaker
• John Childs
• Tim Curtis
• Phil Newport
• Rob Bailey
• Alan Igglesden
• John Stephenson
• Jon Morris
• Neil Williams
• Steve Watkin
• Hugh Morris
• Tim Munton
• Paul Taylor
• Richard Blakey
• Mark Ilott
• Mark Lathwell
• Joey Benjamin
• Jason Gallian
• Mike Watkinson
• Alan Wells
• Min Patel
• Simon Brown
• Mike Smith
• Steve James
• Aftab Habib
• Warren Hegg
• Darren Maddy
• Gavin Hamilton
• Chris Schofield
• Usman Afzaal
• James Ormond
• Kabir Ali
• Rikki Clarke
• Martin Saggers
• Ian Blackwell
• Jon Lewis
• Darren Pattinson
• Amjad Khan
• Ajmal Shahzad
• Simon Kerrigan
• Scott Borthwick
• Boyd Rankin
• Zafar Ansari