CPL 2024 - Jewel Andrew & Suboptimal Roster Construction

The opening match of the CPL took place last night with St Kitts and Nevis Patriots edging to a one-wicket win in a thriller against Antigua & Barbuda Falcons.

Despite 163 playing 164, only one player scored a fifty in the match - Jewel Andrew on his CPL debut aged just 17. There’s been a bit of hype around Andrew for a little while, which I’ve also indulged in after keeping a close eye on his progress over the last year or so - you just don’t really see numbers posted like he does at lower levels in other formats/Under-19s by a player of his age. I tweeted as much several months ago…

He didn’t really show it last night but I think there will be a good six-hitter in his skillset too. Around 2% sixes in red ball and 4% sixes in 50 over cricket so far suggests he could push towards a double-digit six percentage in T20 at peak level, which for context would put him in the top 1% of batters in franchise cricket for six-hitting. I’m sure challenges will come for him on the way, but he’s in a great position right now to have a stellar career over the next decade or two.

I’m less enthused about the rest of the Falcons’ domestic roster though, and I think that it has the potential to cost them in the tournament moving forward. Having Andrew as an emerging player allows them to play five overseas at times, and their overseas doing plenty of heavy-lifting could be necessary given their lack of inspiring domestic names, compared to teams such as Guyana Amazon Warriors and Trinbago Knight Riders in particular, who have cornered the domestic market.

Patriots, last night’s opposition, have a reasonably strong domestic core - Evin Lewis, Andre Fletcher, Kyle Mayers, Odean Smith, Dominic Drakes and Ashmead Nedd, who somehow still qualifies as an emerging player. However, what could be argued is that it’s a team with strong players as opposed to being a strong team.

There’s a lot of square pegs in round holes in their team last night. Lewis, Fletcher and Mayers are all openers, but Mayers was forced down to three (someone had to).

Entry points for their other top six were strange - Odean Smith at 5 coming in after 59 balls worked reasonably well last night but I’m cautious about it being a viable long-term strategy, while Rilee Rossouw at six (entry point 83 balls) was very strange indeed, although I presume that Patriots didn’t want to go left/left with two frontline batters, which I’m not convinced about as a strategy given off spinner Chris Green only had one over left, plus left/left is a match-up blocker for left-arm spinners Imad Wasim and Fabian Allen.

Finally, on the subject of Fabian Allen, rarely does he face as many as 17 balls in a match when batting. In fact, he’s scored 31 runs in his last nine T20 matches (across CPL, Global T20 Canada & Lanka Premier League, plus one match for the West Indies), including the 24* last night. One of the things I look at with all-rounder recruitment is what I call ‘match involvement’, the number of balls batted and balls bowled combined for a player.

Despite playing in an array of T20 franchise leagues, Allen averages a little over 6.5 balls per match batting in his career, and around 13.8 balls per match bowling (total of just over 20 balls per match). Yes, he’s an excellent fielder which boosts that involvement a little further but would he get into many franchise teams around the world purely as a batter or bowler?

Leading all-rounders have around close to double that number of balls batted + bowled in leagues, so although he is 29 years of age, I’m not sure many teams have really worked out what Allen’s role is for them yet - a luxury player who offers some flexibility?

Anyone interested in discussing how I can help their team with strategic management and data-driven analysis can get in touch at sportsanalyticsadvantage@gmail.com.