The Pre-Twenty20 Draft

[blockerdave]

It's like you think I'd be inclined to go off piste and pick someone truly bizarre?

Ha ha - no I don’t think the pick is bizarre at all but perhaps more niche and I think you’d be more likely to be aware of the niche... anyway I think I’ll be going with the bowler on account of him being more “unique”...

 

[blockerdave]

Here's some things you could say about my next pick...

• He is one of the tallest bowlers to ever grace this game and used his height to full advantage. Every length ball of his ends up just short of it and bounces very awkwardly, leaving batsmen unable to defend and desperately losing their wicket...
• His greatest strength... is his accuracy...
• It is a measure of his greatness that most teams chose to respect him and not take him on... and yet he picked up wickets regularly.
• ... can also smash a few sixes if needed with the bat down the order.

Hang on blocker, you say, @Bevab already took Joel Garner...

Oh yes he did. And while Garner would have been my first choice, my pick is close as you can get without slipping a false moustache on "Big Bird" and choosing "Joe Garnier"... Step forward Vince van der Bijl.

I promise I'm not only going to pick apartheid era South Africans (though I'm also not promising to not pick any more...) but van der Bijl is the closest comparison you can get to Garner. Obviously he never played international cricket, but his List A economy rate is actually better than Garner's, 2.73 vs 2.96 (admittedly Garner's strike rate was better).

There is sadly little footage of him playing, but this video - he bowls at 0.01 (great bounce just misses the edge), and at 3.54 (dismisses centurion Pollock), before we see him giving it a hefty bash with the willow from 4.18 onwards.

Playing for Middlesex his stats as they won the 1980 Gillette Cup was an average of 11.11, an economy rate of 1.93, and a strike rate of 34.4. Vince van der Bijl was a legend, is what I'm saying.

your go @CerealKiller

 

[Aislabie]

Oh yes he did. And while Garner would have been my first choice, my pick is close as you can get without slipping a false moustache on "Big Bird" and choosing "Joe Garnier"... Step forward Vince van der Bijl.

Outstanding pick there. I didn't have him on my list though; I do have a couple of non-Test players in mind, but van der Bijl was not on my list of such players. Not because I don't rate him, simply because I hadn't really thought of him as anything besides a very classical length bowler. But he's a great pick, especially when you look at his List A stats like that.

 

[blockerdave]

Outstanding pick there. I didn't have him on my list though; I do have a couple of non-Test players in mind, but van der Bijl was not on my list of such players. Not because I don't rate him, simply because I hadn't really thought of him as anything besides a very classical length bowler. But he's a great pick, especially when you look at his List A stats like that.

Thanks. Because of his lack of international credentials I felt reasonably safe that others wouldn’t pick him so I thought of putting home lower in my pick...

But the thing is for my other picks, let’s say I want batsman A, if someone else picks him I can think of other similar players where there isn’t much difference between A or B or C etc.

But with Garne gone, there is van der Bijl, and absolutely nobody remotely similar I can think of, so I didn’t want to take even a 1% someone took him before I could pick again

 

[blockerdave]

Also @Aislabie it’s my probable next batting choice I’m worried about you having on your list, rather than Vince

 

[Aislabie]

Thanks. Because of his lack of international credentials I felt reasonably safe that others wouldn’t pick him so I thought of putting home lower in my pick...

But the thing is for my other picks, let’s say I want batsman A, if someone else picks him I can think of other similar players where there isn’t much difference between A or B or C etc.

But with Garne gone, there is van der Bijl, and absolutely nobody remotely similar I can think of, so I didn’t want to take even a 1% someone took him before I could pick again

Yep, that's pretty much how I've arranged my list. Players are grouped by role, and for almost all of them I have multiple options ranging from the notable to the niche. Obviously there's no such thing as a Bradman substitute though.

Also @Aislabie it’s my probable next batting choice I’m worried about you having on your list, rather than Vince

What if I told you I'm currently looking at a bowler for my next pick?

 

[blockerdave]

What if I told you I'm currently looking at a bowler for my next pick?

I've only got one spinner so as long as you're looking at seamers i can sleep easy...

 

[Aislabie]

I've only got one spinner so as long as you're looking at seamers i can sleep easy...

That's actually a little bit of a grey area...

I do have a couple of backup players if @CerealKiller picks mine, but there's just one guy who's so far ahead as this type of bowler that it's not even funny.

 

[Gaurav_7]

Hey stop being so cryptic you both! It hurts in the head trying to figure out who you guys are talking about especially for someone like me who doesn't have much knowledge of such players.

 

[CerealKiller]

Graeme Pollock
Profile
Graeme Pollock is widely considered as South Africa's greatest ever player. Unfortunately his international career was cut short by apartheid, but in his 23 Test matches he had scored 7 hundreds and 11 fifties, with a top score of 274, and an average of 60, only Bradman having a superior one at that time. He considered his 125 against England at Trent Bridge in 1965 to be his best innings. Legendary cricket writer John Woodcock wrote about it that "Not since Bradman's day has an English bowling attack been treated like this". He made his runs in a partnership of 160 in just 140 minutes. The Don himself considered him the greatest left-hander he had seen alongside Sobers.
Pollock was a powerful player, and his ability to find gaps allowed him to score quickly. He did not wait for poor deliveries to get going. He would drive on the up, and pull, cut and put away anything not on a good lenght.

Role in the Team
A classic T20 opener. Start quickly in the powerplay, and don't slow down after it.

Comparable T20 Player
David Warner is an easy comparison. But Pollock could do what Warner does with a bat five times less powerful.

CerealKiller's XI
1. Graeme Pollock
2.
3.
4.
5. Imran Khan
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

@Aislabie

 

[Aislabie]

Overall Pick #12: Zaheer Abbas

Profile
I really did plan to pick a bowler, but at the end of the day there are just so few batsmen from before the Twenty20 era who could do what Zaheer Abbas used to do that I couldn't risk leaving him unpicked. If it costs me the leader of my bowling attack, so be it because Zaheer was unique. In a far slower era, he scored at 86 runs per hundred balls in One-Day Internationals. Five of his seven centuries came at far better than a run a ball, and of the two that didn't, one was the famous 108 off 110 - hardly sluggish. He was elegantly brutal, a power-hitter before power-hitters were a thing, and sometimes forgotten because Viv Richards was around at the same time and doing similar things but with a cooler aesthetic. The pair were the pre-eminent limited overs players of their time, trading the number one ranking back and forth for about five years. Regardless, Zaheer would dominate Twenty20 if he'd just had the chance to play it.

Comparable T20 Player
An effortless, destructive and languid Asian batsman? Sounds like we've got ourselves a Rohit Sharma in the side.

Finest Performances
His seven ODI centuries: 108 off 110, 123 off 87, 109 off 95, 118 off 86, 105 off 82, 113 off 99 and 103* off 123. There were even Test innings of 134 off 148, 215 off 254 and 168 off 176. This was a destructive player.

Role in the Team
I was tempted to have him open alongside Bradman, but feel like he's just fine in his natural number three position. If the openers have laid a platform, he can attack; if an early wicket has fallen, he can counter-attack.

Aislabie's XI so far:
1.
2. Don Bradman (Pick #3)
3. Zaheer Abbas (Pick #12)
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

Next pick:
@Villain

 

[Bevab]

Damn it, those were two players that I had on my shortlist! No surprises to see them picked though. Abbas in particular would have been my next pick probably, man was certainly ahead of his time.

 

[blockerdave]

Graeme Pollock
Profile
Graeme Pollock is widely considered as South Africa's greatest ever player. Unfortunately his international career was cut short by apartheid, but in his 23 Test matches he had scored 7 hundreds and 11 fifties, with a top score of 274, and an average of 60, only Bradman having a superior one at that time. He considered his 125 against England at Trent Bridge in 1965 to be his best innings. Legendary cricket writer John Woodcock wrote about it that "Not since Bradman's day has an English bowling attack been treated like this". He made his runs in a partnership of 160 in just 140 minutes. The Don himself considered him the greatest left-hander he had seen alongside Sobers.
Pollock was a powerful player, and his ability to find gaps allowed him to score quickly. He did not wait for poor deliveries to get going. He would drive on the up, and pull, cut and put away anything not on a good lenght.

Role in the Team
A classic T20 opener. Start quickly in the powerplay, and don't slow down after it.

Comparable T20 Player
David Warner is an easy comparison. But Pollock could do what Warner does with a bat five times less powerful.

CerealKiller's XI
1. Graeme Pollock
2.
3.
4.
5. Imran Khan
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

@Aislabie

Definitely was on my list![DOUBLEPOST=1563569723][/DOUBLEPOST]Abbas was on my long list but I really wanted to get Pollock!

 

[Villain]

MICHAEL BEVAN - THE FINISHER
The Australian legend ended his ODI career with an average of over 50. A batting collapse, a run chase? Bevan's your man. Known for his calm composed play style on the field, rescuing his team from dicey situations and finishing the game in style without even hitting it over the park. His calculations and knowledge of the game were spot on, he took the game to the very end. Game was never considered over till the time he was there. It sounds surprising when you get to know he never played a T20 match. His role in the team would be the obvious, the finisher. In modern-day cricket MS Dhoni comes closest to the original finisher of the game.

​

 

[Villain]

@Rebel2k19 to pick next.