Phantom Draft

[zimbos_05]

As someone who is not so keyed up on the domestic scene in Zim, i had to rely a lot on what Cricinfo told me in regards to players stats. The hard part at some point was trying to find players that were not spin bowlers and costing $500. It seemed that most of the players i clicked on were spin bowlers and i already had two quality ones in my team. The decision to keep Mutombodzi was based mainly on his potential to be a possible all rounder, his age, and him being Zimbabwean. We see real potential in his batting and he has shown that with some decent knocks in the domestic scene.

Whilst we are aware that our batting is also quite heavily reliant on Raza and Taylor, we know we have picked up players who are young and talented who have performed on a domestic level. We have two highly promising youngsters in Waller and Welch who provide great all rounder options, and quite excited about our bowling attack of Panyangara (especially seeing his death bowling in the T20), Mpofu, Manyumwa, and then the options of spin are abundant with Kamungozi, Mutombodzi, Mugochi, Welch, and Raza.

We are quite aware that our squad is probably not the strongest on paper, but we have a young squad mixed with a great pool of experience. The potential in our squad is strong i think.

There was players in the $3000 category who could not justify being chosen over those in the $500. Especially as it would have meant less to then use to pick up players later on. It was a key factor in going with a conservative budget in the beginning and seeing how the other teams knocked themselves out over the $3000 players.

[brmtaylor.com admin]

I think we will need to come up with a fair mathematical formula to rank players (the franchise owners will be a part of these discussions), but we need to know what we are dealing with technically first

Better leave us owners out of the equation ... otherwise we will forever argue. It's hard enough to agree on one player's merit when you have two people involved.

I just meant in terms of the formula, like what weightings should be applied. How much should recent form be taken into account compared to career form, how many games should be taken into account to constitute form, etc.

I think there's no alternative than having a calculation determine actual ranking points. Otherwise it's just too subjective.

[foreignfield]

@ the mountaineers brains trust

I thought you could have passed up on Mutumbami and selected Tino then took Wellington before Timmy and let Sarumba take the gloves if you guys really wanted to keep the same squad although in terms of quality taking Richie was the obvious choice ......

I still feel the mountaineers have the best squad apart from lacking that other opener .....

Mutumbami looked so tempting ... It also settled the nerves a bit, because Sauramba might have appealed to somebody else as well.

In the initial proposal presented to the Supporters Trust by our chairman, Tino was even vaunted as a last minute pick because he had struggled for form until the draw started. It turned out the forum values him a lot more than Utseya and co, and rightly so.

Hindsight is always great, but nobody went for a spinner before Wellington was picked (except Mushangwe), and so we settled on Timmy as an opener as the first priority.

[foreignfield]

We are quite aware that our squad is probably not the strongest on paper, but we have a young squad mixed with a great pool of experience. The potential in our squad is strong i think.

You sure used that veto on Welch well.

[CrimsonAvenger]

Well jaybro, mate, we are getting a little bit of stick for our "strategies" in picking the Mountaineers, and I think in addition to foriegnfield's descriptions, we do have our defense. We have anyway been one of the two teams which has retained most of their own team.

If you look at the half way mark, we had 7 mountaineers and a rocks guy in out team after 8 picks. Things got out of control after that, purely because of our need to react to other teams' picks. If there was ever a ZCFLeaks on the lines of WikiLeaks, you would know the painstaking discussions we have had on PM - myself and foriegnfield - before and after every pick, trying to second guess everyone's next couple of moves, etc. We were fairly successful with that in the first half, but it went haywire after that.

In all fairness the only guys we wanted to retain apart from the 7 we now have were Tino Mawoyo, Wellington, Mufudza and Mupunga. We were ok to let Tiripano go (knowing that it is difficult to get them all) as he has required a senior partner to hold hands every time he has performed well. He might do better in future, not denying that.

Coming to our picks, we wanted Regis. Anybody would go for Regis in his current form. We were already crippled by Shingi veto and lost out on Regis. Once Regis went, Richie became hot property. We did not want to settle for Forster as he was in dire form of late. So, we had to make a move for Richie. We tried Welch, got Richie. No fuss there. You would also agree that Sauramba couldn't be trusted as the front line keeper just yet. As foriegnfield said, we are investing on him heavily for the future.

Coming into round 5, I must admit I was a bit worried of losing Mushangwe. If someone went for their primary spinner, Mushangwe would be the first pick - over Tino and Prosper. This made me convince our Supporters Trust despite multiple arguments about Mawoyo vs Mushangwe. We had to move at that point for Mushangwe or stand to lose him, given that we had no veto left. My assumption was that Tino being known as a single format player and given his indifferent form, he would be less hot a property. Wasn't to be.

At this point we had 3 bowlers, a batsman and a keeper bat. We had to move quickly to get some batsmen into the side, and this delayed our picks on bowlers, which hit us later on. Why pick Maruma that quickly? We had burnt our fingers after losing Mawoyo with a miscalculation. So, went for him straightaway. And let us face it, he is as solid a domestic player as you can find all these years. Jemisi's remarks when this pick came about stands testimony. We would have lost him in no time as well.

With the need for picking batsmen, we went for Trenchard in round 9. Now let's look at this - we had a thin batting line up in the Logan Cup anyway, we must be grateful to Pettini and Housego for our early success. We remained patriotic, did not go for imports, had to replace those two with two of our own. In come Mutumbami and Trenchard for them. Decent so far? Trenchard was the best batsman available at that point, by the way.

Now, while we were securing out batting, we lost Wellington. That was an unexpected but smart move by the Tuskers. We had to react, go for Munyede. That meant we lost Mufudza. Things were unraveling quickly and we desperately needed an all rounder. Naturally we set bait for Madziva, and lost. Picked Mbofana instead. This was the only place where we could have acted a little smart and hung on to Mupunga (Tiripano had also gone by then anyway). After that, there was no one else left who warranted retaining.

So, what could we have done differently apart from the last step? Not much, I think.

Are we the best team? may be, may be not. Rhinos are probably on par. They have a great batting line up, and we have the best bowling line up, no doubt. We have a team with a great work ethic, which is music to Gary Brent's ears

[CrimsonAvenger]

We will share our preferred XIs soon. And Tuskers, with your blue shade gone to Eagles, you might fancy going with gold and green uniforms, I presume?

[jaybro]

@ mountaineers

That's fair enough I can see where u guys are coming from and yes hindsight is a wonderful thing I guess you guys made your decisions based on what you thought May have happened and there was no reason to try and keep the same players together apart for sentimental reasons so I wouldn't be too disappointed with the squad u have assembled. The point I was making is I felt when you guys chose Mutumbami and Trenchard you made the choice to go for the best available player and sacrificed the chance to keep the same team together but as I said you have probably assembled a stronger squad apart from missing Tino up the top so I don't disagree with your choices .....

[CrimsonAvenger]

Thank you

[zimbos_05]

We are quite aware that our squad is probably not the strongest on paper, but we have a young squad mixed with a great pool of experience. The potential in our squad is strong i think.

You sure used that veto on Welch well.

There was no one else we could justify using that Veto on really. We knew Vitori would go early, but we wanted to secure two solid batsmen first because bowling options are a plenty. Once we knew that, the veto could only really be used on Welch. He is young and talented. He offers a lot to this team and he comes with the potential to be with us for a very long time. We were quite happy to lose out on some of our players as we knew there were plenty of players available of a similar talent, or younger offering much more potential.

Many of the guys we had in the $3000 range we just not worth it and i couldtn think of anyone else who was worth the veto too.

[totoro]

totoro, can you please talk a bit about how the rankings work in your simulation program?
Do you give players a ranking out of ten overall? Or a ranking in each discipline (batting, bowling, fielding, wicket keeping) or can you narrow it down even further into spin bowling, fast bowling, etc? Do different venues play differently? Can players get "injured"?

I think we will need to come up with a fair mathematical formula to rank players (the franchise owners will be a part of these discussions), but we need to know what we are dealing with technically first

With the simulator I use, you put in a rating for both batting and bowling. You can put in a number between 100 - 1, but I have found that it works better if you rate them between 1 & 40. I separate the players based on bowlers, batsmen or all-rounders, and have ranges for each one, so that I don't rate them too high or low.

There is nothing to represent their fielding ability, or how they play spin or pace.

There is three different pitch types:

Normal - fair balance between batsmen and bowlers
Excellent - Advantage goes to the batsmen
Poor - Advantage goes to the bowler

Thank you for asking, it's something all the managers need to know.

Let me know if anyone has anymore questions.

I just meant in terms of the formula, like what weightings should be applied. How much should recent form be taken into account compared to career form, how many games should be taken into account to constitute form, etc.

I think there's no alternative than having a calculation determine actual ranking points. Otherwise it's just too subjective.

How does everyone want me to rate the players: recent form; career; or both?

Shall we start a poll, so the managers can vote?