@Aislabie
1.
Tony Blain
2.
Mike Allingham
3.
Zubin Surkari
4.
Indika de Saram
5.
Courtney Kruger
6.
Mluleki Nkala
7.
Jacob-Jan Esmeijer
8.
David Williams
9.
Srinivas Venkataraghavan
10.
Abul Hasan
11.
Josephat Ababu
This team is dreadful with both bat (combined average 12) and ball (combined average 91). Not a single batsman here has an ODI fifty, although there are a couple of 49s.
Of particular note is this team's lack of batting depth. The tail really does start at number five with Courtney Kruger, while Nkala and Esmeijer are both batting much higher than they would in better teams.
The Josephat Ababu pick was maybe a bit of an error. There were definitely worse bowlers still available - guys like Paul Mooney - who would have allowed somebody like Brijal Patel to take a top-order batting spot.
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@Bevab
1.
Sajid Ali
2.
Oliver Pitcher
3.
Omer Hussain
4.
Chris Carter
5.
Floyd Reifer
6.
Arshad Laeeq
7.
Stephen Peall
8.
Nayan Mongia
9.
Rashid Zia
10.
Andrew Penn
11.
Paul Mooney
An objectively bad side here: nobody in the top seven has an ODI fifty, and that's never a recipe for success. Hopefully it'd leave too big of a mess for Mongia to clear up.
Good lord the bowling. It's absolutely awful. It comes to something when Stephen Peall is the absolute bowling front-line attacking option but what a terrible attack.
Nayan Mongia also doesn't belong in this draft, but honestly the biggest issue is that
@Bevab didn't pick it himself. Hopefully this isn't due to anything real-life serious.
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@Bigby Wolf
1.
Reinhardt Strydom
2.
Glenn Bishop
3.
Mansoor Akhtar
4.
Dion Ebrahim
5.
Evan Gray
6.
Joe Harris
7.
Carlton Baugh
8.
Salil Ankola
9.
Shaun Udal
10.
Monde Zondeki
11.
Anisur Rahman
Joe Harris for captain was an outstanding choice. He may have captained Canada to their first-ever captain over a Full Member, but that doesn't mean he was very good at cricket.
Unlike a lot of other sides, there's nobody in this one who was an obvious throwaway pick to get the cap count up, and that's a credit.
If anything though, you should have aimed a little lower. Evan Gray, Shaun Udal and Monde Zondeki were all pretty competent in their short ODI careers, and competence is not what we look for here!
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@CerealKiller
1.
Arun Lal
2.
Mike Smith
3.
Stefan Swanepoel
4.
Mohammad Ashraful
5.
Tom de Grooth
6.
Stuart Poynter
7.
Anwar Ali
8.
Prosper Utseya
9.
Marlon Black
10.
Ray Bright
11.
Granville de Silva
Your nine-ten-jack all happened to be completely ineffective bowlers. Like, completely. That's a remarkably big dent in a team's effectiveness.
You got one of my main targets: Stuart Poynter is an actually dreadful example of an international cricketer (and yes, I'm a biased Ireland fan)
So, how to put this... Ashraful, de Grooth, Anwar and Utseya. Well, they're all pretty good cricketers. None of them should be in this draft to be honest.
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@DalePlaysSports
1.
Xavier Marshall
2.
Greig Williamson
3.
Wayne James
4.
Nazimuddin
5.
Aasif Karim
6.
Rod Marsh
7.
Wasim Haider
8.
Suru Nayak
9.
Murphy Sua
10.
Barry Seebaran
11.
James Kirtley
Aasif Karim is in absolute nosebleed territory there in the top five. Turns out he actually did bat there once for Kenya but good lord he shouldn't have done.
Relying on Xavier Marshall to play the anchor role won't work at all (although I never expected a guy with an ODI best of 157 not out to get picked here)
Rod. Bloody. Marsh. He has no place in this draft, and though you pointed at his batting stats even they were far better than those of his keeping peers.
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@El Loco
1.
Cephas Zhuwao
2.
Anil Sah
3.
Trevin Bastiampillai
4.
Chamara Kapugedera
5.
Al Sahariar
6.
Tony Suji
7.
Kwame Tucker
8.
Bharat Arun
9.
Burton van Rooi
10.
Berend Westdijk
11.
Gary Kidd
A spectacularly weak bowling line-up; Tony Suji is the absolute spearhead with his 21 wickets as the other four bowlers have only one wicket each. Very few of them really looked like taking more either.
They will also be poorly-led by Kapugedera, the captain so clueless he forgot what he was meant to do on the short walk from the team warm-up to the middle for the toss.
Honestly, by the standards of this draft that batting is pretty strong. Specialist batsmen down to five and a couple of them (Zhuwao and particularly Kapugedera) have proven themselves decently competent.
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@Sinister One
1.
Navdeep Poonia
2.
Nick Statham
3.
Nicholas Ifill
4.
James Celestine
5.
Peter Gillespie
6.
Naimur Rahman
7.
Sairaj Bahutule
8.
Pubudu Dassanayake
9.
Dipak Patel
10.
Damien Ravu
11.
Pommie Mbangwa
The batting order is absolutely not up to scratch here, which is a credit to your selection especially as you picked several of them quite late in the draft. It comes to something when James Celestine is the second-best of your top five.
There's also a distinct lack of bowling in this side; Ravu, Rahman and Pommie Mbangwa all turned out to be improbably poor in ODIs compared to other formats.
Dipak Patel played a very central role in the Kiwis' revolutionary ODI side, and was an excellent containing spinner. Additionally, captaincy brought the best out of Naimur's batting.
= = = = =
So, if I were ranking these teams from strongest to weakest:
- @DalePlaysSports
- @CerealKiller
- @Bigby Wolf (
stronger)
- @El Loco
- @Bevab (
weaker)
- @Sinister One
- @Aislabie
The bottom three teams are, in my opinion, more or less equally weak. That does make for a very tricky decision on who to vote for; I probably won't vote for Bevab, simply because it's not entirely his own team. So it will, for me at least, come down to whether or not I feel comfortable voting for myself.
Regardless, there's the rundown of all the teams!
