Being snobs about such things of course we did not want to do that ball. Like a Beatles fan who insists that the B side is better than the single, that ball just seemed too obvious, too popular. We tried to leave it out. But we can't. There have been 1,994 Test matches and too many deliveries to count, but all I've said so far is "that ball" and yet you know exactly what I am talking about.

It was not the best delivery Warne ever bowled. That, Warne says himself, was the preposterous ripper out of the rough that bowled Shiv Chanderpaul. There were others too. Plenty of them turned more, as Andrew Strauss, Marcus Trescothick will both testify. Others that were more machiavellian. Some were more humiliating for the batsman. There are so many of them, in fact, that he could have filled this list on his own.

But this column always comes with a disclaimer attached. "The point of Joy of Six is not to rank things, but enjoy them." And that's why "that ball" has to be in this list. It was the one that Warne enjoyed the most. And if we're honest it was the one that we all enjoyed the most too. Why? Because of the characters of the two protagonists. No one in England really knew who Warne was back in 1993. England were not even expecting him to play, David Lloyd infamously assuring his team that a wrist-spinner would be useless on the Old Trafford pitch. A month beforehand Warne had been carted all around New Road by Graeme Hick. In England he was a nobody, with, as Mike Selvey put it in the Guardian's report that day, "a mane like a palomino pony with a No2 around the edges and a nose just blobbed with sunblock like Clouseau after sniffing a jar of cold cream".

But it is the man on strike who really makes it. Poor old hapless Gatt, one of the best players of spin England had ever produced and yet an evergreen figure of fun. He planted his great ham hock of front foot and prepared to pat the ball away to the on-side, then snapped his head around just in time to see the bails fly off. Then there is the look on his face as he turns around again in a double-take, gawping and slack-jawed. It is the punchline to a piece of physical comedy, the kind of look Oliver Hardy perfected 50 years beforehand.

Up in the England dressing room Robin Smith turned to Phil Tufnell and asked him disbelievingly "just what have you been doing for the last few years?" "Oh God," Tufnell thought to himself, "is this what I've got to compete with for the rest of my career?" Not just Tufnell, but England too. For 16 long, haunting and traumatic years. "With that one delivery," wrote Selvey that evening, "Warne has carved his name in cricket folklore."

Take three minutes of your time to listen to TMS's live commentary of that ball, featuring a disbelieving Jonathan Agnew and a dumbstruck Trevor Bailey.

And then take another three minutes of your time to listen to the song about that ball, the Jiggery Pokery by the Duckworth Lewis Method animation. Actually make that six minutes. You'll want to play it twice.

Only an idiot would attempt to produce a formula for greatness, and that's why we're here. In the simplest terms, the quality of a ball, a goal or a try might be determined by the equation quality x context. If you accept that, Wasim Akram's World Cup-winning jaffa to Allan Lamb 19 years ago has a compelling case for being the greatest delivery of all time. As well as being a classic example of Wasim's genius, it came at the tipping point of the most important game in cricket – a game that Wasim bent not only to his will but also to his skill.

Lamb and Neil Fairbrother, two outstanding one-day batsmen who knew their way around a run-chase as well as anyone in the world, had added 72 from 84 balls to leave England 141 for four, needing 109 from the last 96. Then Imran Khan, sticking to his principles of cornered tigerishness, called up Wasim for the 35th over with one thing in mind: a wicket. He got two.

These days there is a mandatory ball change after 34 overs; in a sense there was here, too, because Wasim immediately started to make the old ball talk and struck with his fifth delivery, a beast that swung in and then jagged away sharply to peg back the off-stump. Then he did it next ball with an equally brilliant delivery to Chris Lewis, this one seaming even more violently the other way. Those two balls were the perfect symbol of a fascinating final, naked Pakistani talent trumping exceptional English endeavour (well, England-qualified endeavour in Lamb's case).

Later in his career Wasim bowled a couple of deliveries that were arguably even better, to Robert Croft and Rahul Dravid. But this was a World Cup final, and that's why it will always be his golden ball.

3) Bernard Bosanquet to Victor Trumper, New South Wales v Lord Hawke's XI, SCG, 23 March 1903

"Bosie" was a distinctly mediocre bowler, or so they say. Wisden complained sniffly about his "wretched length" and "erratic fashion". On tour in Australia in 1906 he was described in one paper as "the worst length bowler in England" and yet, tellingly, he was also "the only bowler the Australians really fear". He was the original googly bowler. The wrist-spinner that breaks the wrong way was his invention, and for a time the delivery was even named after him. It is difficult to appreciate now just how radical and controversial an innovation it was. "Poor old googly!" Bosanquet would later write. "It has been subject to ridicule, abuse, contempt, incredulity, and survived them all."

It is easy to see where the ridicule and contempt came in. The first time Bosie bowled a googly in a first-class match, against Leicestershire at Lord's, the ball bounced four times on its way through to the 'keeper. The batsman was Sam Coe, 98 not out. He charged down the wicket to wallop it away, but missed altogether and was stumped. Bosie never did master the delivery to the degree where he was reliably able to land it on a line and length. Or even, occasionally, on the cut strip. But when he got it right, he was unplayable.

They knew all about Bosie in England, where he was the talk of the circuit, but the googly had never been bowled in Australia. Until he got to the SCG for a fixture against New South Wales. On strike was Victor Trumper, the only man who comes close to Bradman in Australian pantheon, if only because he takes the cavaliers' share of the vote.

Trumper, remembered Bosanquet, "had raced to about 40 in 20 minutes". So Bosie sent down a leg-break. Trumper drove it out to the cover fielder. Another leg-break followed, along with another drive to cover. And then "delivered with a silent prayer", out came the googly. The classic three-card trick. It landed in the same spot, and the unflustered Trumper unfurled another cover drive. The ball broke back the other way, slipped past the bat and knocked over middle stump. Trumper shook his head, smiled and tucked his bat under his arm, then said: "That was too good for me, son."

4) Keith Miller to Denis Compton, England v Australia, first Test, Trent Bridge, 15 June 1948

In a democracy, the wise man's vote is worth the same as the fool's. And in the strange world of cricket averages, the wicket of Denis Compton for 184 is worth the same as that of Glenn McGrath for 0. Then again, Keith Miller didn't give a solitary one about averages. Few players, if any, have transcended statistics like Miller. His experiences in the second world war gave him the most enviable attitude to life – "his war," wrote David Frith, "was his peace" – and on the field that manifested itself in the desire to entertain, either as authentic superhero or pantomime villain, and to make decisive contributions. He was everything a sportsman and a human being should be.

He famously allowed himself to be bowled first ball against Essex in 1948, disgusted by his Australia's vulgar march towards a world-record 721 runs in a day, and in the first Test of the same tour he showed his capacity to intervene when it really mattered. England trailed by 344 on first innings but, with Compton playing a staggering innings, they were inching towards a draw just before lunch on the final day. They were 405 for six, 61 ahead, with Compton on 184.

Then Miller exerted his greatness. He sent down a brutal bumper that Compton shaped to hook before realising he was in trouble. He tried to abort the shot but slipped and knocked the stumps over. If the manner of dismissal was ultimately fortunate, then Miller's delivery was deserving of it, a monstrous bouncer of flat pitch to an all-time great batsman who had been at the crease for 413 minutes.

Miller and Compton, both impossibly glamorous and charismatic, would become soulmates. They chatted on the phone every week for the rest of their lives, with Miller referring to him affectionately as "the old bastard". The fact that they were spiritual siblings and, later, such good friends only lent their individual contests a greater lustre.

In 1948 Compton and Len Hutton were unquestionably England's best batsmen. In this match Miller dismissed them in both innings, yet the book says that he took seven wickets in the match to Bill Johnston's nine. The book also says that Australia went on to win the match, and the series 4-0. That's the only statistic Miller cared about.

Some great deliveries are little more than beautiful freaks. The admirable Shane Bond is comfortable enough in his own skin to admit that the ball which changed his life, a sizzling yorker that took care of Adam Gilchrist on Australia Day 2002, was a fluke. At Lord's in 2005, Ian Bell padded up to a straight one from Shane Warne and looked hopelessly out of his depth. Bell said he was convinced it was simply a leg-spinner that didn't turn, but that didn't fit the narrative of Bell being a rabbit in Warne's headlights. Years later, Warne confirmed Bell's story.

The most obvious area in which a pitch can give a mundane delivery a makeover is that of uneven bounce. Nasser Hussain got a hilarious grubber in the Caribbean in 1997-98; at the other end of the scale there's this swine from the England bowling coach, David Saker.

It was not so much uneven bounce as indecent bounce, a fullish delivery that smacked Justin Vaughan in the face and forced him to retire hurt. We often talk about balls that turn square; this one almost rose vertically. It might be remiss to call it a great delivery, but it's the very definition of unplayable. It was all so unusual that, even though Vaughan missed it by a mile, commentators and fielders assumed he was out, caught at short leg. It seems like an obvious case of a dangerous pitch, until you look at the scorecard: Vaughan's South Australia scored 589 for five in that innings. In so many ways, this is a delivery that defies explanation.

No bowler had more ways to skin a batter than Malcolm Marshall. He could cut it both ways or swing it both ways. He could change his pace or his angle. He could out-think you or outfight you, especially, in the latter case, if your name was Dilip Vengsarkar. He could even do it with one hand. As our own Mike Selvey said in this stunningly vivid profile, "he had all the toys and he knew how and when to play with them".

Sometimes he played with a few toys at the same time, as with this remarkable delivery to Ken Rutherford. It swung away, tempting Rutherford to lean into the drive, and then seamed back sharply to knock back the off-stump. Marshall lore is built on such moments.

Still, at least Rutherford made 12 before Marshall got him. It was twice as many as he'd made in any of his previous nine Test innings against West Indies, which had brought him a total of 24 runs. This from a specialist batsman – and a bloody talented one, too, who would go on to salvage a decent Test career from the most ignominious of starts.

Rutherford's debut series, in the Caribbean in 1984-85, was the most inhumane of introductions. He was opening the batting against Marshall, Joel Garner and Michael Holding, away from home, at the age of 19. He made a pair on debut; in the second innings, miserably, he was run out without facing a ball. In the second Test he made four and nought, with those four runs coming off the edge.

Things perked up after that, with scores of two, one and five, making a total of 12 in seven innings. Marshall got him in five of those, and continued to persecute him in this series two years later. Still, there was no shame for Rutherford. He came up against the greatest.