The Quiz Draft

[Aislabie]

Post-Draft Review Part Three: The Final Teams

@[B]blockerdave[/B]'s XI
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01 - Tom Graveney
02 - Rachael Heyhoe-Flint
03 - Ted Dexter
04 - Sourav Ganguly
05 - Clive Lloyd
06 - Ben Foakes
07 - Ken Graveney
08 - Mitchell Johnson
09 - Andy Roberts
10 - Shane Warne
11 - Shaun Tait

Completed after Round Thirteen

There are no easy options in the bowling attack: Johnson, Tait and Roberts, while not being your the typical pace trident, are all express and all very different bowlers. Then when they get tired you have the leg-spin of Shane Warne.
You can guarantee a well-led team with all of those successful Test captains to bounce ideas off each other.
As you have pointed out yourself, it's probably a batsman light; perfectly understandable though given the difficulties of constructing a balanced team with moving goalposts.

@[B]CerealKiller[/B]'s XI
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01 - Archie Jackson
02 - Meg Lanning
03 - Sachin Tendulkar
04 - Javed Miandad
05 - Steve Waugh
06 - Imran Khan
07 - Shaun Pollock
08 - Prasanna Jayawardene
09 - Vince van der Bijl
10 - Curtly Ambrose
11 - Ranji Hordern

Completed after Round Twenty-Two

A phenomenal engine room of a middle-order; everyone from two to six averaged over fifty for prolonged periods of their Test careers.
A fantastic pace quartet of Ambrose, van der Bijl, Pollock and Imran. Would be a horrendous prospect for a batsman.
This team does slightly lack quality spin. Ranji Hordern had fantastic stats from his short career, but as with all small sample sizes there's a fair margin of error.

@[B]Rebel2k19[/B]'s XI
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01 - WG Grace
02 - John Langridge
03 - Rahul Dravid
04 - Rohit Sharma
05 - Sarah Taylor
06 - Shane Watson
07 - Andrew Flintoff
08 - Rangana Herath
09 - Tony Lock
10 - George Lohmann
11 - Lasith Malinga

Completed after Round Twenty-One

This team has a fantastically varied seven-man bowling attack. Bowlers like Lasith Malinga, even if his best didn't come in Test cricket in real life, would be able to flourish as a "luxury bowler" in a strong attack.
With WG on your side, you know that there's a fair chance your opponents will come to some misfortune that betters your chances of winning.
Although you do have good all-rounders in Watson and Flintoff, this team feels a batsman or two short compared to some others. I do think Rohit Sharma is a deeply under-rated Test player, but he's also not a GOAT top-four player. Again though, a lot of this is to do with the draft format.

@[B]Sinister One[/B]'s XI
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01 - Graeme Smith
02 - Kepler Wessels
03 - Justin Langer
04 - Mohammad Yousuf
05 - Michael Hussey
06 - Frank Tarrant
07 - Matt Prior
08 - Richard Hadlee
09 - Sydney Smith
10 - Dale Steyn
11 - Nuwan Zoysa

Completed after Round Twenty-One

Your more left-field picks (such as Tarrant and Sydney Smith) were strong selections, and don't provide a big weak-link in this team.
In Smith, Wessels, Langer, Yousuf and Hussey, every member of your top five values their wicket extremely highly and will be prepared to fight through even the toughest periods.
Although the left-field picks are very good, the fact that most of your more recognised players are batsmen does leave Hadlee and Steyn with a huge share of the workload.

@[B]Survivor[/B]'s XI
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01 - Victor Trumper
02 - Brendon McCullum
03 - Ian Chappell
04 - Dean Jones
05 - Greg Chappell
06 - Trevor Chappell
07 - Tom Cooper
08 - Nat Sciver
09 - Jofra Archer
10 - Phil Edmonds
11 - Allan Donald

Completed after Round Eleven

The Chappell brothers were a great selection; right up there in all-time sets of cricketing brothers.
Because your team was settled very early on, they would have ample time to gel together as a unit before the hypothetical tournament these teams would have been picked for. To see the importance of this, look at the ICC Super Series in 2005.
Of all the bowling attacks I've seen, this is the one I'd least not-want to face. Archer and Donald are quick, but if you can survive them then there's nothing that'll really worry you as a batsman.

@[B]VC the slogger[/B]'s XI
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01 - Chris Gayle
02 - Alastair Cook
03 - Frank Worrell
04 - Eoin Morgan
05 - Garry Sobers
06 - Mushfiqur Rahim
07 - Mike Procter
08 - Bart King
09 - Dennis Lillee
10 - Michael Holding
11 - Charlie Parker

Completed after Round Twenty-Three

Lots of multi-faceted cricketers. Having all-rounders like Sobers, Procter and King is obviously an enormous plus, but even guys like Gayle and Worrell offer a bit of something with the ball.
Again, there are plenty of astute leaders in this team, but you imagine they would all fall into line behind a huge dressing room presence like Frank Worrell.
The two youngest players in this side seem like the weakest links; Eoin Morgan at four against the likes of Imran Khan wouldn't inspire confidence, and I still have no idea how to rate Mushfiqur even as we're now into the fifteenth year of his international career or something like that.

@[B]Villain[/B]'s XI
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01 - Ed Joyce
02 - Mahela Jayawardene
03 - Steve Smith
04 - Viv Richards
05 - Jacques Kallis
06 - Mithali Raj
07 - Shane Lee
08 - Andy Wilson
09 - Brett Lee
10 - Josh Hazlewood
11 - Jasprit Bumrah

Completed after Round Twenty

Lots of excellent pace options, especially the likes of Lee and Bumrah who make you fear for your life as well as your wicket. Bumrah may already be India's fast bowling GOAT and there's still so much more to come from him.
A three-four-five of Smith, Richards and Kallis is terrifying, even if they are in the wrong order. I personally think it should be Kallis-Smith-Richards, but they're all so good it literally doesn't matter.
You don't have a spinner. I only noticed it just now, but any spinning duties will end up falling to Smith and Richards, unless Kallis has a hidden talent for Big Unit off-breaks.

[B]@Aislabie[/B]'s Secret XI
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01 - Hanif Mohammad
02 - Sadiq Mohammad
03 - Wally Hammond
04 - Mark Waugh
05 - Wazir Mohammad
06 - Mushtaq Mohammad
07 - Raees Mohammad
08 - MS Dhoni
09 - Rashid Khan
10 - Colin Croft
11 - Tony Gray

Picked in the background while the draft was going on; players in this team were still fair game for others, which was how we lost Mike Procter.

The batting strength is incredibly deep; MS Dhoni bats at number eight in this team, which means he'll probably never get in because Hanif and Hammond are both in the top three.
Two very different leg-spinners in Rashid and Mushtaq would provide a constant threat on a turning pitch.
After picking five Mohammads, I had hardly any room left for quick bowlers. This means that Wally Hammond is my third seamer.

 

[Villain]

Lots of excellent pace options, especially the likes of Lee and Bumrah who make you fear for your life as well as your wicket. Bumrah may already be India's fast bowling GOAT and there's still so much more to come from him.
A three-four-five of Smith, Richards and Kallis is terrifying, even if they are in the wrong order. I personally think it should be Kallis-Smith-Richards, but they're all so good it literally doesn't matter.
You don't have a spinner. I only noticed it just now, but any spinning duties will end up falling to Smith and Richards, unless Kallis has a hidden talent for Big Unit off-breaks.

You're right, I tried my best picking a specialist spinner but failed in the end due to the interesting format. I also agree with all the points you listed regarding my team. It was a very fun draft so thank you for the effort that went behind it.

I'll vote for @CerealKiller's team - Tendulkar, Miandad, Imran, Pollock and Ambrose are deadly at any given stage. Not much spin options is the only drawback other than that a solid team having a lot of my favorites.

 

[Aislabie]

You're right, I tried my best picking a specialist spinner but failed in the end due to the interesting format. I also agree with all the points you listed regarding my team. It was a very fun draft so thank you for the effort that went behind it.

Yeah, it's very difficult to get a well-balanced team in this. You could be holding off and holding off to get a spinner and then the question is "pick a West Indian fast bowler"

 

[CerealKiller]

I would've had the perfect team if i hadn't boxed myself in a corner by putting off the spinner pick. Anyway, Hordern would at least provide a rest to the quicks

 

[CerealKiller]

As a side note, my "deliberately wrong pick" was Nawaz Sharif, the ex-PM of Pakistan, who actually played one solitary FC match.

 

[Aislabie]

I would've had the perfect team if i hadn't boxed myself in a corner by putting off the spinner pick. Anyway, Hordern would at least provide a rest to the quicks

You would have had a perfect team if you'd gone for Clarrie Grimmett, Bill O'Reilly or even Sanath Jayasuriya (would have been strictly a stock spinner, but he'd have done a job). I'm sure there are others but those are the three I thought of - to coin a phrase - off the top of my head

 

[Gaurav_7]

This team has a fantastically varied seven-man bowling attack. Bowlers like Lasith Malinga, even if his best didn't come in Test cricket in real life, would be able to flourish as a "luxury bowler" in a strong attack.
With WG on your side, you know that there's a fair chance your opponents will come to some misfortune that betters your chances of winning.
Although you do have good all-rounders in Watson and Flintoff, this team feels a batsman or two short compared to some others. I do think Rohit Sharma is a deeply under-rated Test player, but he's also not a GOAT top-four player. Again though, a lot of this is to do with the draft format.

Agreed about a batsman short. I won't say 2 though because Watson and Flintoff can play match winning knocks. Also with that bowling, I hope I won't need an extra batsman.

I wanted to ask if Langridge was a good enough pick at the time I picked him? Or I could have gone with someone else?

 

[CerealKiller]

This draft deserves a reboot, it was really fun @Aislabie

 

[Aislabie]

This draft deserves a reboot, it was really fun @Aislabie

Thank you; it's a lot of work to run, but if I do it again I might get participants to submit two questions each, then generate them in a random order. Could potentially be a little bit fairer than the way I did it here whereby I was the only one who knew what was coming, and also had to think of weird and wonderful parameters.

Probably my favourite one was the Bopara's Bunnies round, because there was absolutely no good reason to have thought of it, let alone included it