Draft: Test Cricket Scrubs XI Draft

[qpeedore]

Initially when I was looking for wicketkeepers for my pick, I didn't find very many who were all that great with the bat. Those who were good with the bat didn't play many games, and at that stage of the Draft, I didn't want to waste a 2- or 3-cap pick on one. But for some reason, a lot of the players I keep looking at right now are also wicketkeepers. So I'm afforded the luxury(?) of having three keepers in my team.

Now, it doesn't mean that I regret my pick of Vilas for the gloves. Vilas still wears the gloves in my squad on the basis that: 1 - he is still playing, and 2 - despite playing only about 15 more matches than my next pick, he has more than double the amount of dismissals as this guy. In no way would I have chosen otherwise, even if I found this guy before.

Anyways, he wasn't the most technically correct batsman (self-admitted), but he could still drive the ball all over the place. His Test career never took off at all. Was it the conditions? Probably not, he'd flay bowlers in the warmup games, showing that the conditions weren't that much of an issue. Was it the quality of the opposition? Maybe, he had a bit of a weakness against outswingers. But the biggest aspect of his game was mental. He admitted that when he didn't perform well, he started to doubt himself. That self-doubt would have been made all the more worse by the fact that India debuted a certain two other batsmen on his first tour - Sourav Ganguly (131 on debut) and Rahul Dravid (95 on debut). He just wasn't mentally prepared to grind away at it and ride out the bad times, and the self-doubt kept coming.

It is perhaps a bit unfortunate, because it wasn't really lack of talent. He kept being included in the squad and, as mentioned above, kept scoring in tour games, causing the selectors to trust him. But eventually enough was enough. The rope could only stretch so far before the noose tightened, and his international career was over. He didn't even wicketkeep in any of the games he played.

No such self doubts at FC level. He kept being quite prolific over his career. But it must have hurt to see his fellow debutants go on to have two very memorable international careers.

Politics aside (and there are a hell of a lot of that...the less asked the better), he's India's current batting coach. Yeah, yeah, I know. Like I said, the less asked about Vikram Rathour being batting coach of an international team when he never quite cut it at that level is...interesting. But by all reports, he's very well-liked by all the players. And of course we do have that last series to remember. So he's not all bad. Maybe if he had this sort of mental maturity 25 years ago, he'd have been a much better Test player.

6 Tests, average 13.1, best 44
146 FC, average 49.66, best 254, 33 centuries, 49 fifties

1. Vikram Rathour (Scoring opener)
2. Shafiq Ahmed (Facilitating opener)
3. Salahuddin Mulla (Mixed aggression batsman, occasional offie)
4.
5. Chandu Sarwate (Jack of all trades, second spinner, offie and leggie, mostly leggie)
6. Chandrakant Pandit (Middle order anchor)
7. Dane Vilas (Second new ball specialist batsman)
8. Wiaan Mulder (Lower order batsman, workhorse seamer)
9. Chris Drum (Second seamer, short spells)
10. Shaun Tait (First seamer, short spells)
11. Tabraiz Shamsi (Strike spinner, chinaman spin)

50/50 caps currently

So I've made the cap quota with one luxury pick to go. Good.

@Aislabie

 

[Aislabie]

Herby Wade

Test stats: 327 runs @ 20.43 (best 40*) in 10 matches
First-class stats: 3,858 runs @ 35.39 (9 centuriies, best 190) in 74 matches

Herby Wade was not a great batsman, and definitely not the best cricketer in his family, but he was an outstanding captain of a limited side. Selected as captain of South Africa in all ten of his Test matches, he lost only four of those despite the team he was in charge of having precious little bowling and batting depth only to about number four - exactly the kinds of players he'll have to get the best out of in this draft. Additionally, whilst an unremarkable batsman he was nothing if not consistent: scoring over 30 in six of his 18 innings and over 20 in three more, he was seldom a part of a collapse, and often the perfect junior partner of an important partnership. He will bat at number five for me, and will serve as the bridge between the composure of Bailey and Salahuddin and the strokemaking of O'Donnell.

@Aislabie's XI so far:
1.
2. Ken Meuleman
3. Rob Bailey
4. Usman Salahuddin
5. Herby Wade
6. Simon O'Donnell
7. Sameer Dighe
8. Pat Trimborn
9. Pat Crawford
10. Dick Tyldesley
11. Gordon Rorke

(46 of 50 caps)

@Yash.

 

[qpeedore]

View attachment 242676
Herby Wade

Test stats: 327 runs @ 20.43 (best 40*) in 10 matches
First-class stats: 3,858 runs @ 35.39 (9 centuriies, best 190) in 74 matches

Herby Wade was not a great batsman, and definitely not the best cricketer in his family, but he was an outstanding captain of a limited side. Selected as captain of South Africa in all ten of his Test matches, he lost only four of those despite the team he was in charge of having precious little bowling and batting depth only to about number four - exactly the kinds of players he'll have to get the best out of in this draft. Additionally, whilst an unremarkable batsman he was nothing if not consistent: scoring over 30 in six of his 18 innings and over 20 in three more, he was seldom a part of a collapse, and often the perfect junior partner of an important partnership. He will bat at number five for me, and will serve as the bridge between the composure of Bailey and Salahuddin and the strokemaking of O'Donnell.

@Aislabie's XI so far:
1.
2. Ken Meuleman
3. Rob Bailey
4. Usman Salahuddin
5. Herby Wade
6. Simon O'Donnell
7. Sameer Dighe
8. Pat Trimborn
9. Pat Crawford
10. Dick Tyldesley
11. Gordon Rorke

(46 of 50 caps)

@Yash.

I'll take a sure 25 rather than a hit-or-miss 50 or duck anyday.

 

[qpeedore]

I've got a fair idea of my final pick, already wrote it up, @Aislabie, @ahmedleo414, @blockerdave can't possibly pick him if they want their cap quota reached. It's really only @Yash. and @Dale88 who can cause me to worry a little, more the latter person because he has hit the quota a long time ago...

EDIT - I'll post my backup picks also when everyone has finished. God, I treat these Drafts with more power than I really should...

 

[Aislabie]

I've got a fair idea of my final pick, already wrote it up, @Aislabie, @ahmedleo414, @blockerdave can't possibly pick him if they want their cap quota reached. It's really only @Yash. and @Dale88 who can cause me to worry a little, more the latter person because he has had hit the quota a long time ago...

I really hope it's the man who was my backup opener until James Foster went; played three Tests

 

[qpeedore]

I really hope it's the man who was my backup opener until James Foster went; played three Tests

No, but I'll have to say that you were something of a massive influence behind the pick. Like I said before, screw you to hell and back. It's all your fault (I have backup picks for that person even anyways.) You can always PM me for a spoiler if you want.

 

[blockerdave]

I've got a fair idea of my final pick, already wrote it up, @Aislabie, @ahmedleo414, @blockerdave can't possibly pick him if they want their cap quota reached. It's really only @Yash. and @Dale88 who can cause me to worry a little, more the latter person because he has hit the quota a long time ago...

EDIT - I'll post my backup picks also when everyone has finished. God, I treat these Drafts with more power than I really should...

I’m well over my cap quota I believe and can pick anyone I want.

 

[qpeedore]

Just don't pick who I want!

 

[Aislabie]

Just don't pick who I want!

He can't - your last pick comes before Dave's

 

[ahmedleo414]

@Yash. Missed his deadline. @Dale88 got next

 

[Ed Smith]

1.Lendl Simmons
3.Shujauddin
4.Ed Joyce
5. Ronnie Irani
6.Senuran Muthusamy
7. Guy de Alwis
8.Gareth Batty
9.George Dockrell
10.Nixon McLean
11.Lonwabo Tsotobe



First Class stats aren't bad at all, and Ed needs a mate who can understand his accent. So George it is...

@Yash. and @Yash. to go

 

[Yash.]

Jehan Mubarak and Heino Kuhn become my final picks.

1. Jim Parks Sr.
2. Colin Munro
3. Buster Farrer
4. Heino Kuhn
5. Jehan Mubarak
6. Ajay Sharma
7. Saba Karim
8. Rana Naved-ul-Hasan
9. Chadd Sayers
10. Jack Young
11. Varun Aaron

Post automatically merged: Jan 28, 2021

@Aislabie

 

[ahmedleo414]

I'll tag @Aislabie since for some reason merged post tags don't work

 

[qpeedore]

Yeah, that's a bit of a weird idiosyncrasy since the switch to the new forum format. The last format tagged people almost without wanting to, now you actually have to work to tag. Weird.

Anyways, since @Aislabie needs at least 4 caps to finish, I think I'll jump ahead since my last pick only has 1 cap. And well, I've sort of had him written up for days now. So after Aislabie it will be @blockerdave to complete his team.

I've already made up the cap quota. This pick is really more of a luxury pick than anything else. Ideally what I should do right now is be looking to see if I can find someone with the highest average possible to slot into my middle order. It doesn't matter how many or how little Tests they've played, I don't need to worry about that.

But I'm looking at my team and I'm realising that without consciously doing it, I have the potential to do exactly what @Aislabie mentioned in reply to my very first pick of Shamsi.

Could also be the first building block of a spin-to-win strategy. Possibly even one with my favourite kind of bowling attack, one that includes all four kinds of spin bowler

I can actually have an attack with three seamers and one of each type of spinner. It would only be fitting if I actually go ahead and do just that with a left-armer who can hold a bat as well. A quick refinement of the search criteria on Statsguru and I'm set. And I've found the perfect player.

Hell, even if I wasn't looking for a specific type of cricketer, I might have picked him based on his nicknames alone. Ian Blackwell is also known as "Blackie" (understandable), "Blackdog" (makes sense), "Donkey" (I'd love to hear the story behind that one), or my favourite...and one of the best nicknames ever, "Le Donk". I literally cannot read that without laughing.

Right, his career. Just the single Test for him, but he had been playing ODIs for England for four years by then, with varying levels of success. That, in itself, might have been a situation of being in the right place at the right time. Not for him, he had to play that FC match anyway, but for then-England coach Duncan Fletcher, who was present in the ground to see him take 28 runs in one over off of Matty Hoggard, then a Test regular. Later that season he played a crucial part with the bat in his team's limited-over semifinal win. But for all 34 ODIs he played, he was seen as more of a bowler than a batsman. And a spinner at that. Six foot two, and a spinner. Somewhere in Barbados, Sulieman Benn might have been looking on and figuring well, if Blackwell could do it, so can he.

Being with the squad in India in 2006, he did well enough in the warmup games for the backroom staff to give him his first cap. He debuted alongside Alistair Cook and one of our favourite players in Drafts, Monty Panesar. (In retrospect, debuting two spinners [to cover for the missing Ashley Giles, a left-arm orthodox himself] in the subcontinent seems like a distinctly West Indian sort of move.) He didn't do much with ball or bat in the game, and since the second match was to be played on more seamer friendly conditions and Panesar was the more successful bowler in the first, he was dropped for Liam Plunkett. There ended his Test career, although he featured in the ODI series that followed the Tests. Imagine what mid-oughties cricket history might have been had Blackwell done better than Monty in that match. Monty would have been the one dropped...no, I shudder to think. The Fates intervened during that Test, I'm sure of it. The world needed Monty.

After that series, he struggled to get back into contention for either format, and a shoulder injury with subsequent surgery didn't help matters. But I think his real issue was a rather interesting attitude toward representing his country. A direct quote from him, but emphasis is mine: "I'm sure lots of people think I should have played for England a lot more, and a lot people think I played for England too much. Do I think I was worthy of playing for England? I'm not sure - it's up to other people to decide that. I was fortunate enough to bowl left-arm spin as well as bat. I didn't back myself to be good enough at either but I offered an option to do a bit of both, which helped me."

That's...not really the sort of thing I'd want an international player to be thinking. He has to back himself and believe that he deserved to be at the top. And I think that he did deserve to be at the top. I mean, England chose Monty Panesar over him. If he'd worked on that attitude and his fitness (even at six foot two he was a bit fuller of body than coaches would have liked)...he'd probably have had a better run.

Maybe batting a little too low the times he played internationally, anyone who can score 28 off of Hoggard (not the best, but not the worst bowler) in an FC match and score 86 off of 53 in a limited overs affair doesn't deserve to bat at 8. I'll move Chandu up to 4 (no worries, Chandu can bat anywhere) and let him bat at 5.

And, of course, my spin attack is also complete in more ways than one. 4 spinners and all of different ilk. On the right pitch, this can be pure magic.

(Aislabie is officially a qpee-whisperer for making me subconsciously end up almost getting there without me noticing it.)

1 Test, average 4, best...4 - no wickets, infinite/undefined average, best 0/28
210 FC, average 39.57, best 247*, 27 centuries, 64 fifties - 398 wickets at 35.91, best 7/52


1. Vikram Rathour (Scoring opener)
2. Shafiq Ahmed (Facilitating opener)
3. Salahuddin Mulla (Mixed aggression batsman, offie)
4. Chandu Sarwate (Jack of all trades, second spinner, offie and leggie, mostly leggie)
5. Ian "Le Donk" Blackwell (Medium aggression batsman, left arm orthodox)
6. Chandrakant Pandit (Middle order anchor)
7. Dane Vilas (Second new ball specialist batsman)
8. Wiaan Mulder (Lower order batsman, workhorse seamer)
9. Chris Drum (Second seamer, short spells)
10. Shaun Tait (First seamer, short spells)
11. Tabraiz Shamsi (Strike spinner, chinaman spin)

51/50 caps

My thoughts:

- I have a decent enough mix of players from Chandu back in the post-WWII era up until the modern day. Most of my players are from the 80s upwards, reflects either a definite bias on my part or that a lot of the old-timers were either really good (not scrubs) or really bad (and there are those aplenty on the list).

- In terms of FC stats, my batsmen all average above 35, Chandu aside, and my bowlers all average below 30, Blackwell aside. But for a spinner, 35 isn't such a terrible average when you consider the overall picture. And as a spin all-rounder, Chandu's value in my squad is for what he can offer both with bat and ball. Apart from a couple of players, I think that these guys really could have had a longer run at the top.

- Hmm. No West Indians. That's probably a first for me in a Draft. I did have some in mind though, they just didn't make the final cut. My explanations will come in my post of backup players.

- The spin-to-win is a legitimate form of attack, and they all have decent enough averages and the wickets to back them up, but on a non-turning pitch only Blackwell (height) and Mulla (armball, flight) will really be somewhat effective, unless the wrist-spinners pull out some flippers and sliders. Really would have liked another seaming all-rounder but I picked my lower half of the order first and there aren't very many top-order seaming all-rounders. But on a seamer-friendly pitch, it's going to be up to the raw pace and awkward action of Tait and the penetration of Drum to get wickets early and often, because if the opposition hasn't lost a few wickets by 8 overs, Mulder is going to have one hell of a lot of work to do. Although...Mulder could bowl 8 unchanged at one end and Drum and Tait could rotate at the other. Hmm...I'm really missing a fourth seamer either way. But that's only on seam-friendly pitches. Anything else and I think my bowling attack can handle it.

- It's a race among Blackwell (shoulder), Drum (also shoulder), and Tait (knee) to see who breaks down first.

- If I'd realised I was going for all the spinners earlier, I'd ideally have loved a left-arm seamer as well. Would have made a complete attack with every single bowling type (in theory).

- I think given the experience, Shafiq Ahmed would probably captain the squad. Too many self-doubting players otherwise. He'll have to bring the best out of them.

Once the final few picks are done, I'll put up my list of backups.

@Aislabie, then @blockerdave

 

[Aislabie]

Anamul Haque

Test stats: 73 runs @ 9.22 (best 22) in 4 matches
First-class stats: 7,083 runs @ 46.90 (22 centuries, best 216) in 95 matches

Generally, if you're looking at an opening batsman who can't even get into the Bangladeshi Test team then you've looked in the wrong place, but when it comes to Anamul Haque I firmly believe the selectors are missing a trick. With 51 caps at the top of the order in the white-ball side, it's clear to see what kind of player the selectors think Anamul is, but they are well and truly ignoring a Test-class opener because of four poor Tests between the ages of 20 and 21. But Anamul has matured a lot since then, and has pushed his first-class average towards 50. As he reaches what ought to be his best years as a batsman, a successful recall mustn't be far away.

Besides, these are the same selectors that picked Aminul Islam as a specialist bowler despite him never playing that role domestically (4 wickets from 36 overs in 21 List A matches), then dropped him after he actually performed well as a bowler (10 wickets from 23 overs in 7 T20I matches) because they'd got over their love of leg-spinners - so I don't think they actually know anything about cricket.

@Aislabie's XI so far:
1. Anamul Haque
2. Ken Meuleman
3. Rob Bailey
4. Usman Salahuddin
5. Herby Wade
6. Simon O'Donnell
7. Sameer Dighe
8. Pat Trimborn
9. Pat Crawford
10. Dick Tyldesley
11. Gordon Rorke

(50 of 50 caps)

@blockerdave