February Mailbag!

Your questions answered...

Again, I’ve been absolutely overwhelmed with the volume and quality of questions for this month’s mailbag - thank you so much! Here’s February’s edition…

Jack: “What does the success of the SA20 and the pecuniousness [wealth] of the ILT20 mean for the Big Bash and BPL?”

It definitely means that both of those leagues will need to consider their place in the pecking order, and how they can develop a USP which gives them a point of difference compared to other leagues.

The Big Bash started toying with various rule changes and then binned them despite not really giving them a big chance to succeed. Ultimately, the success of that league will be dictated by Australia player’s availability, financial pull for the big names and the length of the tournament. Not only this though, if I was a batter then I’d have serious reservations about going to the BBL as opposed to say, the ILT20 - what would you rather, batting on huge boundaries in Australia or playing at Sharjah or Zayed against often mediocre bowlers? One league is going to make your stats look good, the other probably won’t.

The BPL was doing decently well a few years back - I remember De Villiers and Gayle in the same team, and players turning down the BBL to play in it - but I think it’s fallen down since then. Big turnover in teams and ownerships, and the tournament just seems hastily put together. Throw in that most coaches don’t even get a big say in recruitment and it’s just so difficult to succeed.

Also Jack: “Can you see any similarities to early IPL auctions in the players/squad that have been put together in the WPL?”

I think teams still are getting their head around valuation of marquee players. At the moment the highest paid men’s players are paid no more than 20% of their team’s purse, but it’s a higher figure in that inaugural women’s auction. RCB spending a high chunk of their budget on 2-3 players is certainly a similarity, although I have more sympathy with that approach in women’s T20 given that I think the difference in ability between the top players and the average player is quite a bit bigger than in men’s T20.

MT: “Why did MICT do so badly in the SA20 despite having such a strong squad?”

Related - Erika: “Why did MICT absolutely defy their favourable stats to put in such an abject performance in SA20?”

I’m going to write more about this in some detail hopefully next week.

There were a few obvious issues though - I’m unconvinced Van Der Dussen and Roelofsen contribute in an above-average way to winning the boundary percentage count in matches, and you could possibly say the same about Rickelton also. Quite an anti-MI (in the IPL) approach, and teams really need to guard against overvaluing these mediocre boundary-hitting batters unless they so obviously facilitate every other batter to get better (and hardly any batters manage to do that on a consistent basis).

Throw in a tough, learning season for Brevis and a really disappointing campaign from Sam Curran, and it starts to be explained.

Also MT: “Which players do you think have the highest ceiling and so should be targeted in terms of female players for the WPL auction?”

Alice Capsey. Such a rare skillset, let alone from an 18 year old. Huge ceiling and I think represented great value at 75 Lakh in the auction.

Abishek: “After watching SA20 and ILT20 , did you find any players that are IPL quality but not picked by any IPL teams yet ?”

Personally not really, because I have detailed data and knowledge on pretty much any player who perform in semi-decent T20 leagues worldwide. So basically anyone who has decent upside I’d be very aware of anyway - just over several years ago I produced a top 100 young player list (client only). In fact I’m going to talk about that in the not too distant future.

Not all players convert their potential and progress/development isn’t linear but names on that list included Aaron Hardie, Abdullah Shafique, Alzarri Joseph, Azam Khan, Azmatullah Omarzai, Cameron Green, Duan & Marco Jansen, Finn Allen, Gerald Coetzee, Haider Ali, Jayden Seales, Jhye Richardson, Josh Clarkson (who I now think should be playing for NZ in T20), Kyle Verreynne, Mohammad Hasnain, Naseem Shah, Naveen ul Haq, Noor Ahmad, Oliver Davies, Pathum Nissanka, Rachin Ravindra, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Tanveer Sangha, Tim David, Wanindu Hasaranga, Wiaan Mulder and Will Pucovski - as well as players such as Rashid Khan, Shaheen Afridi, Shadab Khan and Mujeeb who were already pretty well-known.

All of those players have dramatically increased their market value and reputation in the two years since I created that list, and if you’d have been able to buy stocks in them, I’d imagine it would have been pretty profitable!

Aries: “ILT20: With Pak players largely expected to play season 2 onwards as well as not clashing with SA20, would it be safe to assume that recruiting will not be as high variance as we saw this season, and from which season onwards would you expect the local player quota to expand?”

Pakistan players surely will improve the competition both in terms of the player pool and also the demand from supporters to watch the matches, so that would be a real positive development for the ILT20.

As for local players, while there are a few exceptions, my view is that we have to go a fairly long way before the general rule changes to them being valuable squad members as opposed to being a compulsory pick.

Also Aries: “PSL: What is your opinion on the Emerging player quota as an analyst? Do you think it should be scrapped or should more leagues look to adopt such a quota?”

More starting XI quota discussion! I’m a little more torn about emerging players because I love to see young players make a name for themselves. The PSL is pretty lucky because there’s so much developing and fairly untapped talent in Pakistan, particularly among pace bowlers.

On the flip side, in the Premier League football for example, there are no such restrictions (some rules about home grown players in a 25 man squad though) and it’s the highest standard football league in the world, so the more quotas/requirements leagues add in is likely to have the effect of diluting the standard of that competition.

Jonathan: “Do any teams consistently use a lower-order (#8/#9) pinch-hitter in the powerplay if they lose 2/3 wickets but want to take advantage of the powerplay field restrictions with attacking intent whilst not risking a top-order batter? Do you agree with this strategy?”

Very few, if any teams consistently use pinch-hitters. In certain situations (favourable match-ups, deep batting order) I think it can be a really viable strategy, but teams have struggled in general to get their head around using pinch-hitters and their implications. I can remember instances of teams using a pinch-hitter and then having no batting after number seven, or teams using a pinch-hitter, losing that player early and then going into their wicket-preservation shell despite the fact that their whole team should have rationalised that it’s a low-value wicket before the innings started.

Charlie: “Intrigued to know your thoughts on players contracted to a franchise and dropping in for finals/one offs (Rashid with MI, Topley with Supergiants...) Will surely lead to unfair auction/retention dynamics if a player knows the club is topping up their pay in another league”

I don’t really know enough about the finances around this type of arrangement but if it removes the level budget element of T20 leagues, I’m pretty much against it. Pretty sure there will be some more rules/transparency added to these situations in the future, or at least there should be.

Biased Cricketing Opinions: “Generally, in the PSL acc to data which approach works better; batting heavy or bowling heavy?”

It’s probably slightly easier to achieve a balance in the PSL than most other leagues due to the sheer volume of pace-bowling talent in the league. Then you can look to the overseas market for batters, of which there are numerous players to choose from.

If you’re playing four overseas, it makes a lot of sense to look at a distribution of something like three overseas batters and a top-level overseas wrist spinner. Throw in a few local pacers, and the best intent merchants that you can find from the local market too, and you’d have a very competitive team in my view.

Rama: “Going for a player like Smriti At WPL auction would cost big and cause imbalance in budget to design a balanced squad. But the brand value she adds is immense. From a business point of view, is the squad imbalance worth it?”

Ah, the old branding value discussion which we’ve discussed so many times in men’s cricket and I’m frankly bored of it. However as this is about women’s cricket I’ll go with this question!

In my view, WPL teams picking up brand names probably makes sense from an owners investment perspective, so you can understand it in year one. However, as I’ve said so many times in the past it shouldn’t be considered nearly as much in evolved leagues because overpaying for ‘brands’ almost always has a negative expected value for on-pitch success.

Not the zen guy: “Do you think pollard could've reinvented himself had he wanted? In last few years the wide line with high pace became a norm against him. Legspin too. It’s surprising that teams took that long to find that weakness with all analytics. That takes to my second question, Is it possible to predict batters drop in runs or form through analytics? David warner,morgan & finch's drop made me think of it. I've seen football teams foreseeing a drop in form of players & later using that information in contract discussions.”

You'd be amazed but a lot of players actually aren’t aware of their own shortcomings, or at least the extent of them. I’ve worked with quite a few players individually and mostly they’re pretty surprised when I show them numbers for various things.

Is is possible to predict drop off in form through analytics? Absolutely. You can do it in several ways, such as age curve analysis which looks at general levels of drop-offs for players as they progress through the age curve, or you can look at how players change the options they take with bat or ball as they go into decline (and this happens A LOT).

Of course, teams could and should be looking to foresee this, but in my experience, this pretty much never happens in cricket. Football is more ruthless right now and cricket, in my view, has a lot of catching up to do in this respect. If you be pretty certain that one of your expensive ticket players is in decline and you can trade them to a rival and drain their budget at the same time, it’s a win/win for your team, but cricket teams are just so reticent to do this.

Nellberg: “After Rashid Khans under whelming (by his standards), SA20 and BBL ... Has he been figured out? Is he just out of form? Will he make a decent captain? Should he have took a week off instead of going to the IT20”

Rashid Khan’s schedule this winter has certainly been hectic - I wouldn’t say no to his air miles! I don’t think he’s been figured out exactly because he’s an absolute world-class performer, but I think there’s probably a combination of him losing a little form/confidence and batters starting to get a bit braver against him because if they play defensively there’s probably a ball with their name on it anyway - so taking a more attacking approach makes sense.

Cricket on your screen: “Why PSL comes out as the most balanced 5-6 team T20 tournament? Is it bcoz of Lahore Qalandars and Multan Sultans' rise or Quetta Gladiators and KK's fall in quality?”

Level budgets, a great draft mechanism where there’s a unique draw for each round, and a fairly obvious template for success. Four overseas helps too. Also probably also a slightly lower tolerance for failure in this league than many others too, so teams take the league very seriously indeed.