January's Mailbag - Q&A

Your questions answered...

Apologies for taking so long with this, I’ve been ill over the last couple of weeks so writing has taken a little bit of a back seat. But things are mostly better now so I’ll get started with the January mailbag! As always, thanks so much for all your questions and it’s overwhelming to see how many people have taken the time out to ask - I’ll try and get to as many questions as I can.

Abishek: “What do you think about the quality of Sa20 and ilt20 ? Which one do you think is superior in terms of quality of cricket ?”

Before the tournaments started, I thought ILT20 would be higher standard. 9 overseas and so many direct signings taking place before competing tournaments really should have ensured that. However, it’s not proven to be the case. The strange recruitment from Dubai Capitals and Abu Dhabi Knight Riders hasn’t helped either.

The South Africa T20 has clearly captured the imagination of the public. I have watched most games and have really enjoyed it. They’ve also been lucky in that the tournament has coincided with a lot of young, high potential talents coming through South African cricket, so there’s a great narrative as well in terms of finding talent and giving them exposure at a higher level.

We’ve already seen in The Hundred how many players have benefited from the exposure a big tournament brings, with unprecedented levels of English players now getting T20 contracts in overseas leagues, and I’d anticipate this being the case for South African players sooner rather than later as well.

Aditya: “How do you see Mumbai's purchase of Cam Green, do you see him as a long term bet that Mumbai can invest in? Also do you think given the age profile of the current Mumbai squad (Ishan, Brevis, Stubbs, Tilak Varma, Cam Green) they have the capability to become a really good T20 squad in 2-3 years. The only gaps I see is a spinner and adequate backups for Bumrah and Archer.”

Green - I think he was grossly overpriced. We have to remember that he’s not achieved a great deal in the format in his career. His big innings have come as opener and it’s tough to see there being a spot in the MI team in that role for him. There is a decent possibility that he could turn out to be very good, but at this stage, we just don’t know. I think there’s also a fair possibility he lasts one season there and gets released.

MI’s future - they have clearly looked to pick up a lot of high potential talent. But they’ll back themselves into a corner budget wise soon enough unless they make ruthless decisions to free up budget (e.g. release Rohit Sharma). If we look at their squad, you could say a lot of the players are undervalued compared to the price they’d pick up in an open market or would be likely to do in a year or two.

SKY 8 Cr, Tilak 1.7 Cr, Brevis 3 Cr, Stubbs 20 L, Archer 8 Cr being five examples.

Spinner - completely agree. For the second season running it’s a gaping hole in their squad. Their middle overs numbers with the ball were poor last season and that’s a major factor as to why. Backups for Bumrah/Archer - they have Jhye Richardson. Domestic backups, not so much.

Related - Anchit: “Do you think someone like Cam Green goes unsold for 2 years straight and gets sold for 17.5 cr the next year and allrounders like Hayden Kerr still getting unsold is a failure of scouting of the IPL teams? If the recent series in India is the only basis, then what are scouts for?”

There’s definitely plenty of recency bias involved in auctions. Sometimes I find that teams can be a little short sighted in terms of picking up players a year earlier than they make a big name for themselves. For example if I was still at PBKS then I’d have pushed to use the last overseas slot (left vacant) to pick up a player like Rehan Ahmed at base price because it won’t take a lot for him to go for much more money in the future.

Re: Kerr v Green. I think there’s an excellent argument to be made that Kerr at base price would have been a much better acquisition than Green at 17.5 Cr.

Kausik: “I've been thinking of India's t20 side and one of the issues I saw was the difficulty in finding batters who can bowl and bowlers who can bat. This forced India to play Axar and Ashwin even though ideally Axar isn't the ideal no.7 and from a bowling pov Chahal would have been preferred over Ashwin.

How could India motivate their batters to pick up the ball? Kohli, Rohit, Shreyas had bowled sparsely long time ago but have pretty much given up.”

It’s something I’ve mentioned many times before, a lot on The Cricket Podcast. It’s very strange because in England, we are seeing the growth of so many multi-skilled players - batters who can at least bowl competent match-up spin, or bowlers who are improving their hitting.

I’d like to think that young Indian players work this one out. It’s a clear point of difference to 1) getting a pathway to the national team and 2) getting a big deal at auction. We know that all-rounders attract premium prices, so if I was a young domestic player, I’d definitely be looking to upskill in these areas.

MediumOne: “As someone who’s sat at an IPL auction table - is there any consideration given to buying players even if they’re not required, simply to stop other teams doing so? Thinking of PBKS and SRH having a lot of purse left at the end and whether they could or should have used this to spoil other teams’ auctions…”

It’s a dangerous game! We’ve seen videos of teams showing this strategy in a positive light, but unsurprisingly never hear of the times where it perhaps didn’t work out.

Personally, unless it’s a really obvious scenario - e.g. one past scenario was to bid up on a player like Rashid Khan to force SRH to go big to use a right to match, knowing that if you end up winning the bid you have the best spinner in the world anyway. So the downside isn’t much at all, as long as the amount you pay doesn’t completely ruin the rest of your roster construction.

It’s even a big risk to do it with a player like Ishan Kishan in the last mega auction. It was always fairly obvious that MI would go big to bring him back, but paying 15+ Cr for a batter could easily have negative implications for the amount you can spend on your bowling attack, which is what we saw with MI last season.

One way you can work out which teams are more likely to do this than others is to see the percentage for teams who bid on a player actually get that player. From memory we were pretty high at PBKS last season for this, which showed that we had a coherent strategy bidding on a group of players that were pre-identified as being likely positive contributors to our group.

Suhas: “Can you plz guide me about data analytics in cricket?? & How to develop myself to prepare for this industry ??”

I’m going to write a separate article about this. There’s been so many asking!

Charlie: “If the number of teams stayed the same, how many overseas players would each t20 league need before they are roughly at the same standard? (I.e IPL having 4 with 10 teams is of a higher standard than BBL having 8 teams with 3 overseas)”

I think that it really depends on the talent of the domestic player pool. So England and India, which have clearly the biggest array of strong domestic players, would still be strong with 3 overseas. But I’ve advocated an increase to 4 for The Hundred and continue to do so - it’s the industry standard, basically, and there’s some correlation between the number of overseas players permitted and the standard of a competition.

The BBL is a strange case. Overseas recruitment has been questionable at best, when it should be considered a point of difference and an obvious area to pick up gains over rivals. Yet when the initial players leave, they often don’t even get replaced, despite the sometimes mediocre quality of part of the domestic player pool.

Related - Vinay: “Will BBL be a better tournament if Australia’s national team stars are available throughout the competition?”

Of course, no doubt about that. It’s a difficult decision to make (you can’t please all the people all the time) but for the success of the competition, there has to be a clear window for Australia’s national team players to play a full part in the competition.

Related - Ponraj: “Is the quality of cricket in bbl is lowered compared to previous season!?”

I don’t think it’s lower, but recent years have had a low bar to beat. Particularly the seasons during Covid. It’s a shame as it’s pretty obvious what the league needs to do to improve.

Adam: “Is it time for England to move on from Jason Roy in all white ball forms and give opportunities to Jacks or Salt”

If we are looking at the last 12-18 months of T20, it’s pretty much impossible to make a data-driven case for him over these two, and a few others as well. Not just this as well, but he’s taking different shot option priorities to when he was at his peak which hints at a problem that is more than just bad form. I really rate Jacks (I recruited him for T10 well over a year ago) and he looks to be the next cab off the rank in my view.

ODIs is a tougher one, given the lack of it in recent months. We don’t really know whether everything will translate over to that as well, so you can understand why England might retain faith in him at least in the short term. But they might have to make a ruthless call pretty quickly.

Aries: “With so many IPL teams buying franchises in other leagues the past year, how do you see this affecting player recruitment and scouting in the coming years?”

The rise of multi-club ownership shows no sign of stopping in football, and I’d imagine cricket will follow along these lines as well.

I think you’re going to see some of the smaller leagues of the multi-club ownership model being used almost as tester leagues to give players opportunities to see how they perform, with a view to stepping up to the higher standard leagues. A bit like minor league in baseball. Leadership roles potentially too - e.g. Aiden Markram at Sunrisers Eastern Cape seems to have led pretty well, so maybe he will get the captaincy at SRH.

In addition, we are almost certainly going to see players become virtually attached to one franchise and just play for them in various leagues. With scouting, we should see more sharing of resources between teams, and in theory at least, some more joined up thinking.

Ayet: “In ur opinion is mumbai's auction strategy on the decline + why do domestic batsmen in ipl auction who arent boundary hitters get huge paydays like manish pandey, shreyas iyer, shikhar dhawan why cant they jus invest in younger boundary hitters instead”

I’ve spoken about MI’s auction strategy and potential implications earlier, so I’ll move on to the domestic batter question instead.

To be honest, I don’t know the rationale here. The logical explanation is that these type of players are overvalued in the marketplace by teams, because they haven’t always understood the extent of the value of boundary-hitting. Also, a lack of younger domestic boundary-hitters hasn’t always helped in the past, so it’s not like there’s been many really obvious players to recruit instead. I’m pretty sure that some of the anchor batters who have gone for big money in the past would struggle to get a domestic contract in The Hundred if they were English - the quality of hitters in England is absurdly high, and many good batters don’t even get contracts as a domestic player.

Overall, IPL teams seem to be getting a little bit smarter in this respect, but it’s a very slow process.

Sathwik: “Looking at the squads, how good a league SA20 is in comparison to PSL and The Hundred?”

I think it’s up there in quality. All three can make a solid case to be the 2nd highest standard league behind the IPL. If The Hundred made a few more tweaks (no clash with the CPL, full availability of England players guaranteed, higher recruitment budgets and 4 overseas) I think it would rival the IPL for quality because the English player pool is that good. PSL quality is held back a bit by the quality of domestic batters but the sheer quality of domestic pacers is something to behold.

AD: “Hi Dan Weston, How should CSK use Ben Stokes?”

I’d look at him as a top order batter. He’s never really shown much consistent hitting upside in the format as a finisher. With the ball, it would make sense to use him more as a middle overs enforcer bowling an over or two in a match, which is the role where he’s had most success in recent years.

Cricket On Your Screen: “Have teams like CSK, MI and PBKS created yet another hole, by bringing in an all-rounder for such heavy prices, that either it has affected their team composition, exposing them on another aspects or their backup Indian players, who will play a role in Impact Player rule?”

I know what you mean. I think Sam Curran was the obvious fit for PBKS and actually really helped with their team balance. Cameron Green, not so much at MI for the reasons I’ve already gone into.

Related - Risv: “I think most of the teams failed to recognise Impact Subs rule and that may prove deciding factor in the end as many don't have quality indian backups. Yours view on whether teams have done well on that aspect or not?”

With the new Impact Player rule, having domestic players who can offer a point of difference (e.g. death hitter, or phase specialist with the ball) are going to be pretty valuable. I think one of the reasons why the BBL struggled with a similar rule is because there just wasn’t enough players on the bench who could be that point of difference. In the domestic player pool in India, there should be more skillset variety and I’m excited to see how the rule evolves, not just this year but subsequently too. Auction dynamics could change fairly significantly.

Random Cricket Stats: “Bargain pick ups from the auction?”

Jhye Richardson - 1.5 Cr to MI

Naveen - 50 lakh to LSG

Gurbaz trade to KKR

Odean Smith - 50 lakh to GT

Prerak Mankad - 20 lakh to LSG

Dark Destroyer: “And out of the players bought which do u think shouldn't have Been bought?”

I’ll paraphrase the question to players who I think were overpriced.

Kane Williamson - 2 Cr to GT

Harry Brook - 13.25 Cr to SRH

Rilee Rossouw - 4.6 Cr to DC

Josh Little - 4.4 Cr to GT (I think he has good potential, but obviously unproven at a high level)

Cameron Green - 17.5 Cr to MI

Ben Stokes - 16.25Cr to CSK

Nicholas Pooran - 16 Cr to LSG

Heinrich Klaasen - 5.25 Cr to SRH

Mahadevan: “Dan in your opinion what types of bowlers are overvalued in auctions in general and is it justified?”

Left-armers often pick up a tax, which often isn’t justified (at least to the extent of it), and express pace is often an overvalued commodity in T20 as well. There’s actually not that much evidence to suggest it’s more effective. Bowlers who can hit are valued highly but that’s more justified.

Jesuyaan: “As teams getting back their home advantage, is this going to affect the team playing style as previously ipl teams played in Dubai and last season in different different venues?”

Definitely - for example the conditions in Chepauk and Bangalore, to use two examples, are going to be markedly different. Excited to see how teams adapt to the challenge.

Man from the 7 Hills: “Thunder this season seem to be going in regularly with a batting heavy team, but until recently they were playing like a team that doesn't have a lot of depth, why play an extra batter but not play an all out attack style of play?”

I’m not enthused about Thunder’s strategy in general and they’ve really underwhelmed as a group. They bat deep but Chris Green at 9 really is only an ‘extra depth’ player as opposed to being a hitter who can add high SR value from that position.

I agree with you though. If you have good depth/pick an extra batter then it really gives you licence to attack much more. Picking spare batters and then batting slowly makes no sense, because picking spare batters constrains your ability with the ball (because you’ve picked less bowlers) - so picking spare batters and then not utilising the batting to the maximum almost certainly will have a negative expected impact on winning the net boundary count in the match, which we know is a really important driver of success.

Also Man from the 7 Hills: “Knowing how much u love winning the boundary count, and how u talk about the 2 ways of going about and winning it, have you seen a team that effectively tries to both outscore their opponent in boundaries, and restrict them at the same time? Implementing both strategies basically”

It’s so difficult in franchise leagues, because the dynamics of drafts and auctions means that if you are strong in one area, it’s very tough to be strong in the other because you don’t have the budget to invest. If you want proven world-class players, they’re going to take a big chunk out of your budget.

Gaurav: “You've always advocated for an increasingly data driven selection process, but do you reckon there's still value in teams having scouts/selectors watching a ton of lower level cricket in the hopes of spotting a diamond in the rough?”

Definitely both, and ideally they will work together as a sort of ‘double tick’ methodology. If your visual scouts recommend a player and the data rubber-stamps that, then it’s an extra layer of confidence about recruiting that player. The other way too, if an analyst spots a player then the team can send a scout to watch that player intensively to rubber-stamp the analyst’s confidence.

@_singhjasneet: “Your take on something like Champions League T20 which used to take place around a decade ago. Should it he reintroduced, as now we have a lot of Franchises across the globe.”

I would love to see it. One issue last time revolved around player selection if a player could represent several teams. So if the Champions League resumed in the future, I’d like to see a player represent their domestic team if they had multiple options.

What it really needs also is big rewards for success in it, like football. Then we will see a lot of teams make better hiring decisions because the incentive to do well in these leagues is much clearer. At the moment, failing teams can basically shrug their shoulders and say ‘there’s always next year’. If a team gets, say, $100m prize money for winning the Champions League, that will focus minds very quickly.