Deconstructing Quetta Gladiators

Analysis on long-term issues, recruitment & selection

2019 PSL winners Quetta Gladiators have fallen on hard times. Following their heavy defeat to Lahore Qalanders yesterday, they now sit bottom of the 2023 PSL with one win from their four matches played.

Not only this, but Quetta also stand joint-bottom of the PSL table for group matches in the tournament played from the 2021 season onwards (last 2 completed seasons, plus the current one):-

I’ve written about the 60-40 rule in level-budget franchise T20 leagues on a number of occasions before - if a team wins over 60% of their matches over a reasonable period of time, they are doing exceptionally well. Considering this, huge credit must be given to Multan Sultans, and their head coach Andy Flower.

Conversely, if a team wins less than 40% of their matches, they have considerably under-performed. Both Quetta Gladiators and Karachi Kings fall comfortably in this zone, winning below 30% of matches with a points per game figure of just 0.58 points per PSL match played during this time period.

Interestingly, Gladiators have kept their head coach (Moin Khan) and captain (Sarfaraz Ahmed) in place throughout these poor teams, opting for consistency as opposed to change. Given that they’d need to win their next 10 matches in a row to have a 50% win record from that 2021 season onwards, it is an extraordinary show of faith from the owners to retain the duo in position.

While the above numbers covering recent years for the franchise are clearly not positive, there is still plenty of time in the current PSL season to turn things around. With four teams out of the six competing franchises qualifying for the knockout stages, the qualification criteria for the PSL is extremely generous - you don’t have to be ‘that’ good to make the final four. The average points to qualify in fourth place across the last five editions of the PSL is 9.4 (4.7 wins), and there have been occasions where a 4-6 or 4-5-1 record has been good enough to reach the knockout stages. So, Quetta could go 4-2 in their last six matches and be very likely to qualify with a 5-5 record, and could even go 3-3 (ending up 4-6) and have a small chance of doing so - all is not lost for the current season.

With such a poor record in recent years, it’s worth going back in time to look at what went wrong for Quetta across those seasons. This way, we can establish whether they were cognisant of their previous problems, attempting to use gap analysis in this season’s draft to right those wrongs, or whether they went into the draft blissfully unaware of what they needed to sort out.

Here’s a look at the batters scoring 100+ runs for Quetta across the last two completed seasons:-

With the exception of Iftikhar Ahmed, who has enjoyed something of a career renaissance in the last few months, Quetta’s boundary percentage among the core batters is pretty solid. However, only Iftikhar, and captain Sarfaraz, have high non-boundary strike rates, illustrating that they possessed a batting group in recent years which is potentially a little one-dimensional.

A mediocre domestic batting core is another problem. The talented duo of Azam Khan and Saim Ayub (who is clearly a far better player than these numbers from a young age show) were bizarrely traded out, leaving only keeper/captain Sarfaraz, Iftikhar and all-rounder Mohammad Nawaz as the three core domestic batters. Umar Akmal has also been used this season, but had played just five T20 matches since 2019 until the start of the current campaign.

A look at some basic metrics for team batting performance across the 2021 & 2022 PSL seasons also sheds some light on Quetta’s issues with the bat:-

Generally, there is a reverse correlation between strike rate and balls per dismissal, which obviously makes logical sense. To increase your strike rate, you must take risks, which reduces balls per dismissal. Conversely, to increase your balls per dismissal, you must take fewer risks, which reduces strike rate.

So, for a team to have the lowest strike rate and balls per dismissal count in the league across two seasons more than hints at a big problem with their batting group. What the chart of 100+ run batters for Quetta above doesn’t show was a number of overseas batters tried but not playing regularly, including Ben Duckett, Ben Cutting, Faf du Plessis, Cameron Delport and Tom Banton. None of this quintet covered themselves with much glory playing for the franchise.

The Quetta batting group in these seasons weren’t great against opposition pacers, but weren’t utterly disastrous - certainly closer to the mean figures than the above overall numbers:-

Considering this, they must have had huge issues against opposition spinners, which proved to be the case:-

Striking at below 115 with barely over 16 balls per dismissal shows the massive problem Quetta have had in recent seasons facing opposition spinners. Clearly, if they were aware of this, they’d have looked to address this with their 2023 recruitment but domestic batting recruitment/retentions of 42-year-old Mohammad Hafeez and the lightly-playing Umar Akmal were unlikely to make much of an improvement to these figures. Plus, these plus their overseas batting retentions/recruits (Jason Roy, Will Smeed, Martin Guptill) are all right-handers, making the batting group susceptible to the ball turning away from them via left-arm orthodox and leg spinners.

Quetta batting recruits vs spin, 2021+ (across major T20 leagues):-

Roy and Smeed can play spin fine, with decent numbers, while Guptill is more of an anchor against opposition spinners. One tactical decision which Quetta may have actually got right is moving Jason Roy down to number three - I quite like this entry point for the current version of Roy, whose numbers facing opposition pacers are not as strong as at his peak. However, it would be difficult to suggest that any of the top four players in this list are anywhere near their peak levels currently, all being aged over 30, and the highly unfortunate Smeed - one of the most prodigiously talented young batters worldwide - has been forced to warm the bench despite Quetta’s struggles.

The point about right-handers is even more pertinent when you consider that Quetta had no left-handers in three of their top fives across four matches this season. Left-handers, as I wrote about in my recent PSL season preview, are a valuable commodity in the PSL given the lack of right-arm off-spin overs in this particular league compared to the average T20 franchise league. Quetta clearly didn’t get the memo about this.

Bowling wise, things were no prettier:-

It is no coincidence that the two teams with the lowest win percentage had the worst balls per wicket figure across the 2021 & 2022 PSL seasons, while the outstanding team - Multan Sultans - had the best. It’s a regular determinator of team success in T20 leagues.

Boundary concession has been a huge issue for Quetta in recent seasons, so their bowling recruitment should have focused on boundary preventers. Here’s a look at their bowlers bowling 10+ overs for the franchise across the 2021 & 2022 seasons:-

As would be expected, spinners lead the boundary % conceded charts (this is pretty much always the case for teams) but interestingly the one pacer who did produce solid boundary concession numbers in this period was released - Khurram Shahzad - and is now playing for Peshawar Zalmi. It hasn’t gone that well for Shahzad at Zalmi so far, and he had an underwhelming National T20 Cup this winter for Baluchistan as well, but this does show the lack of proven domestic pace options which Quetta seemed comfortable going into this season with.

The addition of star leg spinner Wanindu Hasaranga should have helped with boundary concession, but the Sri Lankan all-rounder has been unable to obtain a NOC for this year’s tournament. Undoubtedly, Hasaranga’s absence is a big blow for the franchise although in Qais Ahmad, they do have a very competent replacement. Hasaranga’s absence, as shown yesterday in media interviews, also provides Quetta with a very convenient excuse for underperformance, reasons for which go much deeper than one player’s absence.

Overseas recruitment of Naveen ul Haq and Nuwan Thushara - quite a Moneyball pick - should also help in this respect, although team combinations have made it difficult for Quetta to field an overseas pacer. The problem for them has been that only Mohammad Hasnain and Naseem Shah, who are still both young inexperienced as well, are proven domestic pacers in this league.

All-rounder Odean Smith - certainly not renowned for his low boundary concession percentage - has been used as a regular bowler so far, and despite his all-round talent, has arguably caused more problems than he solves in this area. Smith is much better suited to bowl middle overs, as shown by his career data but also performance in this phase for Quetta so far (9.14 economy, 19.05% boundaries conceded) compared to the Powerplay and death for the Gladiators to date (13.33 economy, 33.33% boundaries conceded). These non-middle overs numbers from Smith in this year’s PSL aren’t necessarily his fault - he’s being asked to bowl in phases which don’t necessarily suit his strengths - but in my view, points to questionable phase usage from the Quetta think-tank, and potentially recruiting a player to play in a role in which they aren’t necessarily suited.

How to move forward?

In my PSL season preview, my potential Quetta XI had two overseas bowlers in it - Hasaranga plus Naveen - and that looks a really strong bowling attack with Hasnain, Naseem and Nawaz all four-over bowlers as well. Substitute Qais for the unavailable Hasaranga, and it looks good still. This was what I thought their team could be prior to the tournament:-

This team is bowling strong, much stronger than Quetta bowling attacks in recent years. It also has strong phase balance and would enable the bowling group to have clear role definition. It is also nothing like the XIs which Quetta have put out in the tournament so far. Obviously I would recommend that Quetta adopt a starting XI far closer to my XI than the ones which have failed for them so far.

With regards to future seasons, these are my key retentions for the franchise:-

Will Smeed - cheap in silver category and could be a future superstar

Naveen - same reasons as Smeed, high ability improving multi-phase pacer

Hasaranga - world class all-rounder, as long as he’s available would be an asset for any team

Mohammad Hasnain/Naseem Shah - extremely talented pace bowlers which form the start of a very strong domestic core

Mohammad Nawaz - peak age all-rounder but I’d look to move him down from Platinum which looks a little overpriced

My key retentions ignore captain Sarfaraz, who will be 36 next season and has unspectacular T20 data, and perhaps surprisingly for some, Iftikhar Ahmed. Iftikhar has shot to prominence in recent months (T10 onwards) but he will be 33 by next season, and despite his purple patch of form, still strikes at below 100 against the ball turning away from him (both left-arm orthodox and leg spin). I actually think that his ‘form’ has benefited from teams being really bad at working out match-ups against him (he’s faced more balls via off-spin than leg-spin from the start of T10 onwards, which makes zero sense from an opposition planning perspective whatsoever).

There is no other option but to be brutal with this playing group than a complete overhaul, but the six players listed above provide a strong future core for future seasons, containing players of both high current and future ability who can grow together as a franchise.