A Leftie's draft

[shravi]

Tall, muscular and imposing, Graeme Smith a beast of a man, and just the sight of his meaty frame must strike fear into the hearts of the opposition. His attitude and personality match his physique as he met the challenge of captaining his nation at the mere age of 22 head on. From April 2006 to February 2008, he lead South Africa to 7 series victories in a row. South Africa beat New Zealand twice at home, beat Pakistan home and away, and overcome India, Bangladesh and West Indies. Most importantly however, he is a wonderful batsman.

On the 2003 South African tour of England he made double centuries in consecutive Test matches: 277 at Edgbaston and 259 at Lord's.The 277 is the highest individual innings ever made for South Africa, and the 259 is the highest score made at Lord's by a foreign player. He is also known for being able to strike lethal partnerships with his opening partner. Smith has the distinction of having been part of all four of South Africa's opening partnerships of over 300 runs: in three of them he was partnered by Gibbs, and in 2008 Smith added 415 for the first wicket with Neil McKenzie against Bangladesh, a world record opening partnership. In 2008, he lead South Africa to its first series victory in England since 1965, starring with a century in the Lord's test and 154 in the third to win the test and the series (they were chasing 283 and were 93/4 at one stage). His biggest achievement as a captain and indeed as a batsman came in December 2008-January 2009 in Australia where South Africa won 2-1. He scored 108* chasing 414 in Perth, the second-highest in Tests. He then scored 62 and 75 in the series-winning game in Melbourne. In the final Test in Sydney, he walked out to the middle despite a broken arm and almost saved the Test. Smith's side became the first team to defeat Australia at home in 18 years.

In 86 tests (151 innings), he has scored 7170 runs at an average of 50.49 with 21 centuries and 28 fifties. What makes this choice even better is that he is only 29! There is so much more to come from Graeme Smith.

Graeme Smith
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
+ Rodney Marsh
Wasim Akram
Chaminda Vaas
Bill Johnston
11.

 

[pcfan123]

Is he your captain as well Shravi?

 

[shravi]

Is he your captain as well Shravi?

Haven't decided yet tbh, but it would be hard to look past him.

 

[drainpipe32]

I'm screwed here, my picks have been so far apart, plus I've picked foolishly :laugh Should have gotten a quickie, there are few good ones left :S Might end up going two spinners, quicks and Sobers.

 

[sifter132]

Why not just go all spin?

 

[Iridium]

Why not just go all spin?

Or go all batsmen like I'm going to do because I'm almost out of bowlers. :laugh

 

[sifter132]

Heh - yeah, just needs a bit of originality

 

[Cricketman]

Damn, I was going to go for both Mitchell Johnson and Smith. Give me a few mins lads, just got back from a 15 hour, 400+km trip.

Cricketman added 16 Minutes and 46 Seconds later...

Mike Hussey

Once again too tired to do a full writeup. Averages 52.16 in 50 matches, with almost 4000 runs to his name, and 11 centuries. I promise i'll do full writeups later :o.

1.
2.
3. Kumar Sangakkara
4. Graeme Pollock
5. Michael Hussey
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. Zaheer Khan
11. BS Bedi

 

[shravi]

Good pick, but might want to start picking some bowlers as I suspect that the remaining ones (fast bowlers) will go fast. Looking a little weak atm. Zak is good, but he's not that good. Personally, I think you should have gone for Mitch while you had the chance.

 

[Dare]

The middle order is looking really good but like Shravi said the bowlers are running out.

 

[Iridium]

Man I'm guessing we've got another long wait on our hands. send2yaari hasn't been on in ages. Let's hope he makes his pick soon.

 

[sifter132]

Hmm yeah - hopefully he comes on soon. If not, well there's a couple of options:
a) find a replacement, give him a double pick so he's not penalised too much and keep going - someone like Dare or Mark might be keen to jump in
b) ditch send2yaari and continue with 6, with some kind of system to allow his 3 players to go back into the draft pool. Maybe if you want to pick one of his players you forfeit a future pick or something like that.
c) just keep him in and put this pick into the 12th round as well and hopefully he turns up soon and he'd just continue with 2 picks missing.

Anyway, we'll give him his time - it's pretty early in the morning over there right now and hopefully he comes on during the day sometime.

Good pick, but might want to start picking some bowlers as I suspect that the remaining ones (fast bowlers) will go fast. Looking a little weak atm. Zak is good, but he's not that good. Personally, I think you should have gone for Mitch while you had the chance.

I ALMOST picked Mitch at the top of round 3 which might have raised some eyebrows. But after getting Flower, I wanted another bowler who could bat so I had the option to play with 5 bowlers if I want, plus I particularly wanted a strike bowler since all the good left arm bowlers (pace or spin) seem to have excellent economy rates rather than good strike rates. It was all hinging on Gazza's pick, if he took a pace bowler I was going to take Mitch (or Bill Johnston if he picked Mitch) but he picked Verity so I went with what I thought the best overall player was - Neil Harvey and hoped like hell there'd be some fast bowlers left when I picked. And the one I wanted fell through the cracks

 

[Iridium]

Hey I picked Vettori in the second round not only because he was one of my favourite picks but because I knew that bowlers would be in short supply toward the end of the draft. TBH there's a lot more modern players being picked, more than I thought there would be.

 

[shravi]

Hmm yeah - hopefully he comes on soon. If not, well there's a couple of options:
a) find a replacement, give him a double pick so he's not penalised too much and keep going - someone like Dare or Mark might be keen to jump in

If we find a replacement, do we really need to give him 2 picks ? Just give him the pick from this round. He would get the one missed pick in round 12 as planned. Send2yaari has to deal with that one missed pick and therefore, so does his replacement.

 

[Iridium]

This was bound to happen, that one person would hold everything up. Things were going quite swimmingly...