Mailbag #1

Questions and Answers!

I meant to post this last week but things ran away with me…firstly for most of last week I was in Dubai/Abu Dhabi for the T10 Draft where I worked with Bangla Tigers and I’m delighted with the squad we’ve brought together for the fastest form of cricket. It starts on November 19th and I’m really excited for the tournament - here’s a photo of the Bangla Tigers brains trust from the draft and I really want to thank the Bangla Tigers team for their hospitality during the time I was in the UAE.

Secondly, the reason why I didn’t post previously was because I currently have Covid! It’s not too bad right now but I’m just super tired and struggling to concentrate for long periods of time, and I’ve completely lost my sense of taste, but it’s a lot better than it was a few days ago - only a week of isolation to go…

Anyway, let’s get to answering some of the questions posted in the last post, where I asked for questions. I’m really sorry if I didn’t get to answering some of the questions answered, a few were a bit too sensitive to answer and a few probably justified an article on their own themselves - so if your question didn’t get answered, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll write about that in more detail in the future.

Ayat: “How good do you think Afif hossain and mohammed saifuddin from bangladesh are to get into the IPL”

I think they’re both pretty talented young players and definitely two of the better Bangladesh players coming through and forming the new core of the national squad as some of the older, big-name players begin to decline. We’ve just picked up Saifuddin for the T10 so I’m really excited to be working with him in that particular tournament as well.

At this stage, before the World Cup, I think I’d be slightly surprised if Afif was picked up in the next IPL auction. Saifuddin probably has slightly more chance - we’ve seen in previous auctions that IPL teams strongly value frontline bowlers who can bat well, and Saifuddin does fall into that category. Afif is probably one of the better Bangladesh boundary-hitters but in a world where the likes of Alex Hales, Joe Clarke and Josh Inglis currently haven’t got IPL contracts, I think it’s pretty ambitious to suggest that Afif will leapfrog those type of players.

Having said that, we are close to a World Cup and then the IPL auction will follow that pretty soon afterwards - and many IPL teams love picking players who benefit from recency bias, so if these players (and many others) have a good World Cup (and just as importantly, play well against India), then nothing is impossible.

Anonymous: “Was SRH correct to drop a player as successful as Manish Pandey?”

Yes, I think so. Personally, I’d have never recruited him in the first place, certainly not at 11 Crore. When recruiting batters, you have to consider how they help your team win the boundary percentage count, and I don’t see how Pandey does this - particularly in a team with Williamson, Warner and Saha already in it. What SRH should have done is spent the 11 Crore on the best local hitter - not another rotator/accumulator player.

Looking at Pandey’s boundary percentage from IPL season to season, only in his breakthrough season in 2009 did he have a boundary percentage in excess of 17% - a figure which is barely above the IPL mean boundary percentage in recent seasons. He joined SRH in 2018, and in the preceding year, hit around 13% boundaries, and below 4% sixes - so they can’t argue they didn’t know what they were getting.

Finally, Pandey has averaged just over 14% boundaries in his entire career in the IPL and in my view, there’s absolutely no way that makes him a player worth 11 Crore.

Aryan: “Would love to know how MS dhoni and co get the best out of the players they have I can remember names that no one thought would be cut for T20 cricket. Is MS Dhoni the god of percentage cricket? Is he the best at defining roles of players?”

This is a really interesting question to answer, and one I’ve got pretty strong views on.

My opinion basically is that 90% of captains are pretty much neutral in terms of value added as a captain, with 5% being top-level and adding tons of value, and 5% being really bad and shouldn’t be anywhere near captaincy.

Dhoni, in my view, is in the top 5% without any doubt. He makes far fewer match-up mistakes than other captains, and appears to show far more faith in the players he trusts than many other captains as well.

The interesting part of this is that these criteria sounds pretty basic in which to consider a captain is doing well, and the reality in my view is that it is basic. He does the basics very well, and because so many captains don’t even manage that basic level, he elevates himself considerably above most in this area.

Mike: “Hi Dan, when you were a part of the Birmingham Phoenix, how much control did the team management over the conditions like the pitch, how high you cut the grass etc?”

I don’t really want to talk about the Phoenix in particular here, but generally speaking in most competitions, be they red ball or white ball, the home team’s groundsman will be able to create the pitch he sees most suitable. Of course, he may be under orders from team management to create a specific type of pitch (e.g. some teams who have good spinners might want to produce rank turners) but that’s where having some form of home advantage comes into play. Some teams appear much better than others at creating tracks which they want in order to play their ‘brand’ of cricket.

Girish: “Hi Dan. We all know the problems of bad selection and as a true blue RCB fan, I have seen pretty much every auction panning out real bad in terms of the picks. When it is this apparent to me as an outsider and probably a mildly informed though extremely passionate cricket lover, why do they get it so wrong at the auction? Or is this a case of hindsight wisdom and we cannot read too much into it? How much does recency bias play in auction decisions and are they strong enough to change firmed up plans for players? Also, sometimes do commercial decisions to hire a superstar is made more from a branding perspective than a team requirement perspective”

Great question, and I feel that I probably can’t justify the question in a few paragraphs, but I’ll try.

Without speaking about RCB in particular, I’ve already touched on the subject of recency bias in auctions - I anticipate that the coming World Cup will be of far too much influence towards teams in the next IPL major auction, so that’s covered to star with.

With regards to why teams get things wrong at auction, there are a few main reasons (as well as that recency bias)

1) Teams struggle to understand the difference in standard from one league to another - a good example would be overvaluing the Big Bash, which in my view consistently seems to happen.

2) Teams struggle to understand what drives success in T20 cricket. As discussed previously, Manish Pandey - a below-average boundary hitter - shouldn’t have been sold for 11 Crore in an efficient market, because it is difficult for a batter hitting around 14% boundaries to help his team win the boundary percentage count.

3) Teams have a poor grasp of the worldwide player market. This is largely because there are so many matches taking place worldwide, so it’s virtually impossible to keep an eye on all of them - and this neatly segues onwards to point 4.

4) Teams use big-name ex-players to perform much of their recruitment. Considering it’s basically impossible to visually scout all these players, and most ex-players have little idea what creates a team capable of performing at an above-average level, it hints at a major structural problem for many teams. This is why teams should employ specific recruitment analysts to work for them, and a few forward-thinking teams (like the ones I work for) are doing so, but these teams are few and far between.

5) Owners have too much involvement. This seems to happen more in cricket than football, although it’s not unheard of in football either. If you own a business, whether it is in sport or not, surely the best strategy is to let experts run it for you in order to maximise performance?

6) Agents. I know most agents, and get on well with the vast majority. But some are, shall we say, very persuasive about their players’ talents. If you have a great knowledge of the worldwide player pool, like I think I do, then you can challenge their assertions and understand when they’re being economical with the truth. But that’s a big ‘if’, and people who don’t do enough due diligence on their recruitment are at huge risk of being taken in by agents claims and the consequence is signing the wrong player.

7) Branding. Girish hinted at this in his original question. My view, probably unsurprisingly, is that branding considerations are grossly over-rated in cricket. If you create a winning team, branding will take care of itself - like they said on the film ‘Field of Dreams’, if you build it, they will come.

There’s a big difference between football and cricket here. Let’s look at PSG signing Lionel Messi. Whatever money they recoup in branding they will be able to reinvest into their team, because football doesn’t have a salary cap/level budget, which cricket does. So a cricket team being completely on point with their branding isn’t nearly as useful - if they make a load of money commercially, the only person who will benefit will be the owner, because they can’t reinvest that money into the team - an IPL team can’t go above the fixed budgets which all teams have.

Kumar: “Hi Dan,

How do you go about recruiting in an auction? How much does the local factors, such as pitches, availability of local players (players from the city, state) play into recruitment? I say this because, as an RCB fan, they've always looked to bring in local players from the state where they play in. Is this right?”

I think I’ve kind of touched on some of these questions in a few other posts but there’s definitely some scope to pick players who understand local conditions. However, teams should be pretty careful with this - there’s a big difference between picking a player who is very adept in specific home conditions, and picking players from your local area just because your scouting network is limited. In summary, I think it can be useful (maybe as a line call between two players) but I personally wouldn’t go overboard on this.

Ronan: “Hi Dan, who would you say has been the most underused player in the IPL? Could perhaps benefit from moving franchise.”

Local player I’d go for here would be Ishan Porel. He’s done really well at SMA level for a while now and looks to be a young player with a pretty high ceiling if he develops in the future. I’m surprised he hasn’t had more game time for what has been a pretty mediocre PBKS team. Also Sai Kishore at CSK would probably be a regular starter for a good few other teams.

Overseas is tough. Most get a good amount of opportunities. One player who hasn’t this year is Ben Cutting. In my view, Cutting has to be used in specific roles (e.g. death pace hitter, and hiding his bowling in 1-2 middle overs) but my numbers suggest he adds more value than a number of overseas all-rounders who have had more game time, such as Dan Christian and Moises Henriques.

Tim: “Hi Dan, a couple of questions:

1. Why do you think Martin Guptill has never been picked up by IPL franchises (other than brief stints as a replacement), despite a good international record?

2. Conditions differ across countries / grounds. An obvious example, I think, is playing country cricket for Surrey (good for batting) vs playing up North (where conditions are more bowler friendly). When analysing performance data, do you adjust for conditions? If so, how?”

1) Based on teams previous recruitment, I think Guptill probably should have had more of a go in the IPL in the past, but broadly I also think this is where teams have largely got it right. Domestically he’s done his best work in relatively low standard, pace-bowling friendly competitions such as the Blast and Super Smash, and has really struggled in the slower, spin-friendly CPL. Plus when you factor in that there’s an over-supply of good overseas top order batters in IPL auctions, you can understand why teams haven’t invested consistently in Guptill.

2) Yes, you are spot on. I do adjust for this, but unfortunately I can’t disclose how I do - it forms a lot of my recruitment work for the teams I work for, so is too commercially sensitive to discuss further in the public domain.

Vinny: “Who will win T20 World Cup and why?”

It’s impossible to give an absolute answer here, but I’ll try and write a detailed article about this before the tournament starts. Briefly though, when ascertaining a team’s chances of winning a tournament, it’s imperative to look at whether they have a squad capable of winning the boundary count in matches on a regular basis.

In my view, India and England have the best opportunity to do this, but having watched the IPL, I wouldn’t be surprised if England struggled in the UAE on these tracks and their absurd decision to only pick one frontline spinner. West Indies can beat anyone on their day - they have the hitting to blast any team away - while Pakistan, if their bowling unit performs on a consistent basis, can’t be discounted either. I’d be pretty surprised if Australia fared well - their team looks too ‘old school’ in my view, while South Africa also have a similar dynamic in my view (and I don’t like their squad selection at all). On that subject, New Zealand made a couple of selection mistakes (omitting Allen and Milne in particular), in my view - but if they perform above the sum of their parts, which is very possible, they could also get to the knockout stages, where anything is possible.

Also Vinny: “Do you believe the role of the 'anchor' which the likes of KL Rahul, Dhawan & Babar Azam do is becoming outdated in T20 cricket? Are they a help because they score runs over a period of time or a hindrance because of stike rate is often slow?”

To some extent yes I think they are becoming outdated, because of what I’ve written numerous times about winning the boundary percentage count in a match/tournament to achieve success. What you want is more of a what I call a facilitator (a player who can help all their team-mates achieve their maximum output) rather than an anchor - there’s a big difference between the two types of player - and if you do play an anchor, they should also have high hitting upside in the death overs.

It sounds strange when you first think about it but in my view, the main consideration when picking an anchor should be your bowling attack. If you have a mediocre bowling attack, then you shouldn’t play any anchors, because you’ll need to hit your way to big totals to win the boundary percentage count (as your bowling attack will concede many boundaries). This is why I don’t think Dawid Malan should play for England, because in my view their bowling attack doesn’t allow them that luxury.

However, if a team’s bowling attack is decent, you can get away with playing a facilitator. If your bowling attack is excellent (e.g. Sussex in the Blast, Perth Scorchers when Langer was coach, peak SRH a few years ago) then you can even get away with two anchors.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that there has to be a coherent dynamic between your batting and bowling, with all decisions focusing on winning the boundary percentage count.

Felix: “Would love to hear your “alternative” England T20 15 man squad Dan, of those who are available but weren’t selected and maybe some reasoning?”

It’s quite tough for me to answer this because I have some domestic recruitment roles, so I’ll compromise by giving one name who should clearly have been in the squad - Matt Parkinson. My numbers suggest he’s grossly under-rated by many, and there’s been far too much unnecessary speculation about his bowling speed. If these IPL tracks in the UAE are anything to go by, England will really regret their selection of just one spinner in Adil Rashid. Whether they want two leggies is another matter, but Matt Parkinson is clearly the best unselected spinner in T20 right now in the English domestic player pool.

That’s it for Mailbag #1, I hope you enjoyed reading it - I’ll do another one in around a month’s time, and make it a regular feature of this Substack. Assuming Covid doesn’t slow me down, I’m planning on doing another post this week, focusing on ‘intent’ in the IPL - it should be a good one!