Gideon Haigh's Ashes Top Ten

To complement my essay on Charlie Macartney, this week's Ashes Hero, Gideon Haigh has kindly sent in his Ashes Top Ten. Gideon is one of Australia's foremost cricket journalists (even though he was born in England) and his fairness, wit and verve have won him many fans. His latest book, The Green and Golden Age, is a collection of his cricket journalism and essays on modern Australian heroes. Here's who he has gone for:

Don Bradman The eighth wonder of the world: an Australian cricketer beloved by the English

Shane Warne In what could have been a flat period of Ashes cricket, so one-sided were its results, he rejuvenated the contest by his craft and charisma

Ian Botham The hero of the last period in which it could be asserted that cricket was England's number one sport

Dennis Lillee A fast bowler with a slow bowler's guile and a man with a rebel soul, the first player to sign with Kerry Packer and the last to soften in any dispute

Wally Hammond The complete cricketer, fit to grace any World XI

Warwick Armstrong Progenitor of the modern Australian way of cricket: ruthless, relentless, mentally strong, to the edge of the Laws

Len Hutton Only he and Mike Brearley among English captains have won the Ashes home and away. Into the bargain, he completed the emancipation of the professional cricketer in England

Hugh Trumble Long-headed, long-fingered, he counteracted more effectively than any other bowler the increasing dominance of batsmen during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Check out his stats - he's still the only Ashes bowler with two hat-tricks and, I'm pretty sure, to bowl unchanged through a Test.

Fred Spofforth No other cricketer can claim to have inaugurated an entire tradition. "This thing can be done," he told his teammates at the Oval in 1882 - it remains the guiding philosophy of Australian cricket.

Douglas Jardine The closest that England have come to their own Armstrong; his repudiation by England's cricket establishment says much about the differences between the two countries