Did you see Lara bat? He was incredible. Flamboyant and scored all around the ground. Could dig in or bat for days. As for Holding, maybe you should face him, I know I wouldn't have liked to. Touching 95 mph, accurate and aggressive. You need to spread your wings past the year 2000.
He might have been good but so was Sachin and he can admit he found things difficult and was out of form at times. He also had the weight of a Billion people on him as they say. Pointings the same. He can admit he found it difficult. They both must have found things difficult, everyone does. And Ajmal, how does he do it.
I never saw Holding but he had to have been out of form. According to Wiki he avg just over 4 wickets a game.
Think he was called the whispering death, get on YouTube and look. Forget about numbers, they played a lot less test cricket back then, a summer series and winter series.
Don't see a problem in having a wicket that plays the same all the way through, have a test to see which team comes out on top, not who can win the toss.
They surely wanted a pitch with Pace and bounce. A quick pitch would suit Cooks game more than one like this. Why do I say that? Well If you watch Cook against bowlers about 85 everythings in line on a good pace wicket and his heads over the ball...... On slower wickets he falls over a bit especially against the right hand bowler over the wicket and he can get 4/5 wickets lengths out of line. When he does that he can get out to anything. Down the leg side with a fine snick, lbw because he doesn't know the line and out wide because he's not fully sure where the off stump is.