Chewie Best Pick: Fawad Alam - A great pick in round 4, your first 5 rounds were pretty bloody good. Kudos. Worst Pick: Lonwabo Tsotsobe - Nyrrrrreeeeeeeoooooooommmm BOOOOOOOOOM and you crashed in a ball of flames in round 6. <iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/V6F_E5NZ9Y0?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Your round 18 pick should bowl ahead of Tsotsobe. Overall Squad Depth: C+ Mostly because your round 18 pick was pretty good, some weakish picks rounded off your first 11 and it was a mixed bag for the last 7 squad members. However with a few gems like Collymore in the mix, Ch00ie should be pretty solid throughout. Stuart Broad Angelo Mathews Gautam Gambhir Fawad Alam Monty Panesar Lonwabo Tsotsobe Tharanga Paranavitana Alex Doolan Rajat Bhatia Chris Rushworth Uday Kaul Rahat Ali Murali Kartik Irfan Pathan Sachithra Serasinghe Kamran Akmal Sharjeel Khan Corey Collymore
Worst thing about the Lopsy pick is that they got completely lucky with it and he returned to First Class cricket and took a five wicket haul after like a two year absence. He'll still be rubbish but nowhere near as bad as he was when they actually picked him.
Incey Best Pick: Keegan Meth - with no big name bowlers, some may call Incey's a toothless attack. But no one personifies the depth of his seam bowling unit like Gummy Joe picked in round 14. Almost any of his workhorses could fit in to this spot though, it's really a team just jam packed with the 2nd to 3rd seamers everyone else wishes they had. Worst Pick: Hamish Rutherfod - theres a lot to say about Ruther... oh nope he's gone, nicked it behind. <iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/JY8y4cumV-w?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Overall Squad Depth: B+ The amount of bowling depth you have is ridiculous probably the most of any team. The batting leaves a little bit to be desired, but if you get your home pitch right? Could definitely be a championship team. Jacques Kallis Shakib Al Hasan Mohammed Shami Jean-Paul Duminy Ed Cowan Umar Gul Neil Wagner Abhinav Mukund Hamish Rutherford Haris Sohail Thami Tsolekile Tom Cooper Colin Munro Keegan Meth Chris Hartley Sean Williams Chris Jordan Liam Dawson
He's got 8 wickets at 16 recently so he might not be terrible. If he does manage to perform well in this, it'll be fun to play him just to spite everyone.
I think it became a bit of mindset thing with everyone else towards the end. They were trying to stats-whore their ways into hidden gems every round because they assumed they had to at that point, whereas you just went and picked up some genuine depth players.
Yeah agreed 100%. Who'd have bloody thought that players with a bit of international experience may go a bit better than some bloke you've never heard of that has some good stats over an 18 moneth period.
I think I've admitted somewhere that de Lange was a cock up. I thought his record was completely different and neither of us checked.
Heef Best Pick: Mominul Haque - probably the finest exploitation of h4x we've seen so far. This promising young Bangers bat averages about a million in Test cricket and should certainly not have lasted this long. Worst Pick: Hamish Marshall - Heef making the ballsy decision here to pick someone he won't play. <iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4Ru8DMW-grY?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Overall Squad Depth: B- Cheteshwar Pujara Ben Stokes Virender Sehwag Trent Copeland Samiullah Khan Imran Farhat Zulfiqar Babar Graham Napier Naman Ojha Mominul Haque Bilawal Bhatti Shehan Jayasuriya Kraigg Braithwaite Graeme Aldridge Hamish Marshall Adam Wheater Amit Yadav Gerrie Snyman I reckon Heef will almost certainly have one of the strongest batting outfits and with the first round pick of Pujara that should be no surprise. His bowling however relies fairly heavily on domestic heroes from weaker competitions. It's probably one of the teams with the greatest ability for variance in the entire competition. I expect Heef and Fung will manage their selections well though and they may well have a plan in mind when it comes to their home pitch.
If Nikita Miller is going to be gun despite being a first class hero in a competition heavily biased towards spinners, then Samiullah Khan must be of equivalent standard. It's not as if Miller has substantial Test returns to fall back on either. I'm also making the ballsy decision to bat Hamish Marshall as an opener if all other openers fail. After all, it's what New Zealand would do.