Phantom Draft

[CrimsonAvenger]

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.

Interesting. We thought Regis Chakabva would be vetoed. Surprised he was not. We even waited to see if he gets vetoed, so that we can move on to Welch as our next pick

[foreignfield]

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

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

I think it should be both.

Career averages mean a lot if the sample size is big enough as you would expect guys to turn around even a prolonged slump in form at some stage (like Mutizwa recently), but you can't simply ignore bad form over a season or more. On the other hand you can't rate a player like Maruma on his career stats as a bowler when he hardly bowls any more whereas his batting average over the last three seasons is probably twice his career average.

I also think there should be a bonus for guys who have played a substantial amount of international cricket, because it tends to affect their career averages quite a bit.

I guess rating the youngsters who have only played a handful of games will be difficult. Potential is impossible to gauge objectively, but I'm sure you will use common sense.

[totoro]

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

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

I think it should be both.

Career averages mean a lot if the sample size is big enough as you would expect guys to turn around even a prolonged slump in form at some stage (like Mutizwa recently), but you can't simply ignore bad form over a season or more. On the other hand you can't rate a player like Maruma on his career stats as a bowler when he hardly bowls any more whereas his batting average over the last three seasons is probably twice his career average.

I also think there should be a bonus for guys who have played a substantial amount of international cricket, because it tends to affect their career averages quite a bit.

I guess rating the youngsters who have only played a handful of games will be difficult. Potential is impossible to gauge objectively, but I'm sure you will use common sense.

Players currently in the Zimbabwe team will be rated higher, unless they have down little for the national side, or if someone else is preforming better than them.

It can be quite complicated at times, but I'll do my best to include career and form together.

[Jemisi]

Career is crucial, form should be last two seasons, not just this one as it will even out statistical spikes.

Also a bonus for anyone with more than say 20 international games is a good factor to consider as well.

[foreignfield]

Career is crucial, form should be last two seasons, not just this one as it will even out statistical spikes.

Agreed.

[Jemisi]

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

Maruma and Trenchard were crucial to you guys having a decent batting card and you picked them up in the nick of time, I can assure you. You could have taken Mufudza for Munyede if you wanted to keep Goats players, but you chose to have variety in your spin dept which was the wiser course of action. Mushangwe was always on my mind but I felt that since I was picking 3rd each round I would likely miss out on him which meant taking a different route with the spin attack. Natsai was the only spinner in the draft that could be described as one of the attack leaders along with Vitori, Chatara, Shingi, Mupariwa and Panyangara. You guys managed to get three of those six whilst we all got one each. Pretty telling as far as the bowling goes. Tiripano probably 7th out of that list and with the veto worthy Madziva I knew I had an excellent balancing player at 7. I didn;t have an emotional attachment to the Rhinos players and after missing BRMT I was desperate to get Regis. Richmond would have helped - I was sure to get one of them by that stage, but even Mutizwa would have worked. There are 4 keeper batsmen worth having, everyone snagged one. Sauramba is the 5th in that category but he is well off the others in performance at this stage. The other keepers suck. Mupariwa, Tsiga, have been poor. Mayavo too has been pretty dire.
Keeping Goats players was a no brainer in the early rounds as they have the best quality. After we had taken a few of them you were only left with trying to get the best going round. A key point of difference was that most of the 12-15 round picks were used on youngsters whereas I went for more experience. Rhinos are yet to win a title, so I need the 26 year olds doing the business rather than waiting for players to develop.

[foreignfield]

A key point of difference was that most of the 12-15 round picks were used on youngsters whereas I went for more experience. Rhinos are yet to win a title, so I need the 26 year olds doing the business rather than waiting for players to develop.

Experience vs youth was a recurring theme in our discussions as well.

From ZCF-Leaks:

.. maybe too late a realization, but we could have gone for Bonaparte Mujuru. Not someone who would set the world alight, but an honest trier by the looks of it. Started off this season really well, but faded away when Chari took center stage. What do you think of him for the next round if (a big IF) available?

Did one final round of check of every batsman available, none close to Mujuru in experience / records. So, he might get snapped up anyway.

I must admit I had completely forgotten about Mujuru, but he averages 13.5 this season from 7 matches. He's aleady 27 and not likely to improve dramatically. You know what you'll get from him, which is not a lot.

Mujuru is more solid than the average no name of the Zimbabwe cricket circuit, but tough luck, I would say, and let us move on to the next generation.

In the end you snapped up Mujuru one round later than Crimson predicted.

[Jemisi]

I thought Mujuru was the best available batsman not to fit into the XI. His form this season was bad, but his career average is as good as many of those snapped up before him. Also his 50 per innings ratio is quite good by Zim standards across all formats - 14 in 84 innings. That is one every six hits certainly not the 1 in 3 or 4 of Taylor or Williams or even the 1 in 5.5 of Vusi, (82 in 450 hits) but quite good for the also-rans.

[brmtaylor.com admin]

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

In that case, we'll need something to differentiate the bowlers or else there's no strategic benefit to having spinners or seamers in the squad.

1. Possibly, a 20% weighting added to seamers for games played on "Normal" pitches and a 20% weighting added to spinners for games played on "Poor" pitches? That way we have some more strategy involved in team selections.

2. I think it would also be good if the captains can target certain players. For instance, each captain is allowed to choose 1 "development" player before a match, whose weightings would be increased by 10%. That way a captain is not penalised too much if they choose to give a young player game time. A player like Sauramba for example doesn't have a stellar record right now, but if you chose to make him a development player then he might have a decent shot at improving his record.

3. Likewise, the opposition captain can choose one "targeted" player (someone who their bowlers will give a lot of chin music or the batsmen will attack ) whose weighting would be reduced by 5%. Some more strategy for the captains... do they try and reduce the influence of a good player, offset the influence of a development player, etc?

What do the franchises think of these ideas?

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

What we need is a transparent formula, so we can just make a script and the captains type in their chosen XI and it will generate the ranking points automatically. It will make it completely scientific and unobjective.

There's a third consideration too - the simulated form. If we only base the players rankings on domestic and international statistics, then their ranking points will never change from match to match. So there's no reason for franchises to change their teams too much irrespective of the results (outside of seamers vs spinners as mentioned above). If we take simulated form into account then team selection becomes an important strategy. But because domestic and international form will change whenever a real match is played, it doesn't necessarily mean a franchise will want to de-list a player that doesn't perform well in the simulations.

Just throwing some stuff out there to see what will stick... 45% international form, 35% domestic form, 20% simulated form (half of each group being "recent form", so 22.5% recent international form and 22.5% overall international form, etc). Given the way international players dominate the domestic scene it's probably not too skewed? Now what the make up of each percentage is... strike rate, average, highest score, best bowling figures, what subset is allocated to recent form... that's a whole new discussion I guess?

[foreignfield]

As I understand it, totoro uses an established program which simulates matches; here's a scorecard with commentary: http://www.planetcricket.net/forums/cri ... 5-196.html

I don't know what other programs are out there, but we probably do not need to reinvent the wheel .. in the end it's all fun and games, right?