Further thoughts on Quetta Gladiators

Failure to evolve?

At this stage of the PSL, Quetta Gladiators aren’t far off living rent free in my head. I’ll say it now - I’d love to have the opportunity to turn them around, and I think it would be a fantastic project.

As I tweeted last night, retain Smeed, Hasaranga, Naveen, Nawaz, Hasnain, Naseem Shah and ditch the rest. A few asked about Iftikhar, but I couldn’t incorporate a veteran player into my team who has such an issue with the ball turning away from him - it’s interesting that when he’s succeeded, he’s generally faced hardly any balls from these spinners or performances have been in leagues where spinners don’t tend to thrive (e.g. T10).

This won’t be a long Substack, because I’ve already given detailed thoughts on their issues here, but I want to throw out a theory as to why they’ve struggled in recent years - essentially this focuses on a failure to make smart decisions when other teams have improved their thought processes.

Think of it like this - back in the day, in the early years of the PSL, teams weren’t advanced tactically. Islamabad United used data in their decision making and were considered light years ahead of the rest, as their initial results illustrated. You also had Lahore Qalanders, who were hot favourites to come bottom of the tournament every season in the early years of the PSL because their recruitment was so horrific. With four of six teams qualifying, as long as you weren’t as bad as Qalanders, you’d have a great chance of making the knockout stages.

In those days, you could get away with 6 x RHB in the top six, or having a lot of declining veterans in your team, because most other teams were making similar mistakes, or your opposition didn’t have a great idea how to exploit those errors.

Fast forward on from those early PSL years and we’ve seen teams evolve. Lahore are no longer a joke and possess one of the best bowling attacks across all franchise leagues, and Multan Sultans came in to the league a few years back and are led very astutely by Andy Flower, again with a perceived data-driven input. Islamabad still have a similar methodology of picking overseas intent merchants with the bat and trying to corner the market for local pacers, and they have the best domestic all-rounder in the tournament as well (Shadab Khan).

But Quetta have stood still. They are still making the same mistakes as the early years, picking unbalanced teams and valuing players on reputation as opposed to current ability, but now with opposition teams slowly but gradually improving their knowledge about how to succeed in T20 leagues, their rivals are evolving at a faster rate than Quetta.

This year’s PSL data so far for teams facing right-arm leg spin/left-arm orthodox spin combined - the bowlers who turn the ball away from the right-hander making it difficult for RHBs - show that the result of playing too many right-handers for Quetta isn’t pretty.

Not only this, but Quetta have faced the joint-most balls from these bowlers. So not only are they weak against these bowler types due to their recruitment and strategy issues, but the opposition have worked this out and are exploiting them hugely by bowling a lot of these bowling types to them.

Ultimately the franchise is likely to need a complete overhaul at the earliest possible point, and some thought should be given to hiring people who are capable of implementing such an overhaul. As mentioned above, retentions have to be ruthless and focus on high current/potential ability players generally below peak age, while the declining veterans have to be jettisoned. A tactical strategist would be extremely beneficial too, in order to ensure players are recruited who complement each other, rather than picking six right handers in your top six - because as has been the case this season, such a naive approach is being completely exploited by the opposition.