Budget Draft: ODI Nations

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Ryan ten Doeschate

@Yash.
5. Ryan ten Doeschate

Cost: 2
Batting VARP (top order): 145.22%
NB: Top order VARP used because middle-order sample size was four innings, including two not-outs.
Bowling VARP (seam): 27.39%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

The outstanding Associate player with any sort of longevity, it simply couldn't be far into this draft before Ryan ten Doeschate disappeared. And he's an excellent pick: a batting VARP of 145.22% shows that you're picking one of the very best available players at his level, and a bowling VARP of 27.29% presents him as a strong bowling option if required. Can't fault this pick.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Eoin Morgan

@Akshay.
5. Eoin Morgan

Cost: 2
Batting VARP (middle order): 0.14%
Batting VARP (top order): 33.64%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

There's no doubting that Eoin Morgan is a very good player, and with his eligibility for Ireland the temptation is strong to pick him up early on in the draft. However, the odd thing that Akshay has done is to bat him at number five, rather than his preferred number four: as a middle-order batsman, Morgan's record is demonstrably ordinary; nudge him up the order to four (ahead of Ashish Bagai in your team) and you have a man who averages over 44, striking at over 94. Three stars here because he's a good pick but in the wrong role.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Rashid Khan

@Bevab
9. Rashid Khan

Cost: 2
Batting VARP (lower order): 42.22%
Bowling VARP (spin): 68.70%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

Another pick that it's impossible to fault is Rashid Khan at the low low price of just two points. He's an outstanding spinner, arguably the best white-ball spinner in the world for the last few years. There's also the underrated second string of his late-order hitting: his VARP shows the significance of averaging over 20 at a run a ball down the order: he's unlikely to smack a century, but as a purveyor of quick 20s he's right up there.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Steve Tikolo

@ahmedleo414
3. Steve Tikolo

Cost: 2
Batting VARP (top order): 6.32%
Bowling VARP (spin): 18.37%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

This is a pick that comes out surprisingly badly, but the Steve Tikolo was a player whose reputation far overtook his results. Somewhat Vaughan-esque in that an outstanding record in the red-ball game (Tikolo averaged nearly 50) did not translate into the white ball game. He also averaged 39.95 in non-ODI List A matches, with six centuries in 78 games, but could never actually deal with top-class ODI bowling. Perhaps it was the pressure of trying to carry a team of club cricketers.

 

[qpeedore]

Loving this analysis from you @Aislabie. So far I don't disagree with your star ratings either. Keep it up.

 

[ahmedleo414]

I mean, I obviously disagree with tikolo ratings but, I'm still excited to see the rest

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Sachin Tendulkar

@ahmedleo414
2. Sachin Tendulkar

Cost: 3
Batting VARP (opener): 62.90%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

An excellent choice for an opening batsman; in terms of VARP, his numbers don't quite match up to the likes of Rohit and Kohli, but his influence and longevity certainly gain him a bit of extra kudos. Sachin is one of those players whose legacy far surpasses such concerns as curiously calculated performance ratings. 45 ODI centuries as an opener. You can't argue with it, and it is also backed up by his "Greatness" score (another of my mad metrics) of 253, which comes in fourth among batsmen behind AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli and Viv Richards among batsmen I've looked at so far.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Mustafizur Rahman

@qpeedore
10. Mustafizur Rahman

Cost: 2
Bowling VARP (seamer): 54.79%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

Mustafizur Rahman's VARP demonstrates the fact that he's the sort of seamer with the ability to do well in places that other seamers don't. He averages 23 with the ball while a replacement seamer could be expected to average 33, and that sort of wicket-taking ability certainly doesn't come cheap. There are better and more influential seamers out there, particularly if you're willing to spend three points as opposed to two, which is why I've given this pick four stars.

For the record, I did this pick a little out of order. This was a complete accident, please forgive me.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: AB de Villiers

@Bevab
4. AB de Villiers

Cost: 3
Batting VARP (top order): 82.14%
Batting VARP (middle order): 226.51%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

Yeah, AB de Villiers can never be anything other than a five-star pick. As a top order batsman, he struck at over 100 while a replacement would be expected to strike at less than 80, and did that while averaging 53. An incontrovertible five-star pick. However, what would have made him a six star pick would have been to slot him into the middle order rather than the top order: in that role, he is a frankly ridiculous 226% better than a replacement player could be expected to achieve. So yeah, you've simultaneously made a five-star pick and missed out.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Jacques Kallis

@Akshay.
3. Jacques Kallis

Cost: 3
Batting VARP (top order): 37.90%
Bowling VARP (seam): 3.54%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

Jacques Kallis' counting stats are monumental: over 11,000 runs and over 250 wickets in one-day international cricket are not to be sneezed at, and again contribute to a far higher "Greatness" ranking than VARP ranking. His lower VARP is partly down to Kallis' tendency to score at a relatively sedate pace: while his batting average is 13 higher than his contemporaries, his strike rate is slightly lower - which pans out as a VARP of under 40. His bowling, meanwhile, is very much secondary: a useful option to have, but not something which as an isolated skill stands out compared to those around him.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Joel Garner

@Yash.
11. Joel Garner

Cost: 3
Bowling VARP (seam): 98.26%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

The bowler with the highest VARP of anyone to have a decent sample size (because there's no way it can be fair to compare him to someone with just a few dozen overs), Joel Garner was an outstanding acquisition. He had a bowling average of 18.85 and an economy of 3.09. "But he played in a bowler-friendly era!" Yes - an era where his contemporaries (guys with names like Holding and Marshall) collectively averaged 29.53 and leaked runs at 3.92 per over. Garner was monumental, and should have been almost everyone's first choice three-point bowler.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Kevin O'Brien

@qpeedore
6. Kevin O'Brien

Cost: 2
Batting VARP (middle order): 20.60%
Bowling VARP (seam): 16.22%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

Kevin O'Brien's stats aren't outstanding; with the bat, he's a muscular player who gets runs at a pace others often struggle to match (which is reflected by an impressive strike rate of 88 batting in the middle order), but with the ball he's a bit of a liability, conceding runs at almost as rapid a rate. Fortunately, he's in a team where he's probably the seventh-choice bowler, so we can look at him almost exclusively as a batting pick. By that measure, he's pretty good - his knack for delivering in big matches is something that VARP doesn't account for.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Shaun Pollock

@Aislabie
8. Shaun Pollock

Cost: 3
Batting VARP (lower order): 49.04%
Bowling VARP (seam): 70.52%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

One of the very first names on my team sheet, Shaun Pollock has kind of become a forgotten legend in one-day international cricket. With the bat, he scored his runs at an average of 26 and a rate of 5.2 per over; with the ball, wickets came at an average of 24.51 with a frankly ridiculous economy of 3.68. Both are almost obnoxiously better than his contemporaries, and it thoroughly confuses me why he never makes it into the conversation for greatest one-day international players.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Andy Flower

@CerealKiller
4. Andy Flower

Cost: 2
Batting VARP (top order): 26.42%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

Andy Flower is another accumulator whose Test stats precede him. In the one-day game, he had rather less of an impact; this isn't to say that he wasn't a very good player - he was, and is probably the only exception to the rule of "don't pick Zimbabweans in this draft" - but four centuries in over 200 games and an average of 35 isn't a great return on his obvious ability. By no means is that to say that Flower is a bad pick, but he is perhaps something of an early pick considering the players available.

 

[Aislabie]

VARP Analysis: Sanath Jayasuriya

@ahmedleo414
1. Sanath Jayasuriya

Cost: 3
Batting VARP (opener): 34.86%
Bowling VARP (spin): 14.09%

Pick Rating: ★★★★★

Okay so be honest here - if I asked you to guess what Sanath Jayasuriya's batting average was, how many of you would have guessed about 40? Well you'd all be wrong - it was only 32. And really, that shows the limitation of the traditional approach of just looking at someone's batting average to see if they were good or not. As an opening batsman, that average climbs to nearly 35, but the most important thing about Jayasuriya was that he scored fast before scoring fast was cool. He scored at over five and a half an over when no other opener was doing so, and it was largely because of his influence that other started to see the field restrictions as something to exploit. His bowling was okay, but not much beyond "does a job" standard contributions.