Unscheduled Mailbag!

So many questions...

Yesterday I joined the guys on The Cricket Podcast to discuss England’s World Cup final victory, and I asked on Twitter for any questions, and I generally got a load yesterday on there as well. We couldn’t get through them all (the show was well over an hour!) so I thought I’d answer the ones we didn’t get to here. If you are interested in the show, you can check it out here. The questions we did get to are from 51:50 on the video.

I’ll still do a November Mailbag as normal too, probably towards the end of the month with hopefully plenty of discussion on the retentions of the IPL teams.

Qudrat: “England are lucky to win both the Tosses in SF + F. Do you agree, that Toss is the boss in knock out?”

Certainly in the subcontinent I believe it’s huge, with the dew factor a big consideration. However, away from the subcontinent I don’t believe it’s such a major factor - in fact in England, for example, a number of venues have a bat first bias.

Deepak: “Hii. Just wanted to check if you will be providing your services to Punjab Kings for IPL this season?”

So many people have been asking me this question recently so it’s probably best to get something on record about it.

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like being the case. I really enjoyed my time with the franchise and I’d like to think helped significantly in building what I believe is a strong squad with both the ability to compete now and also have longevity with a number of high potential younger players.

However, I haven’t heard from the franchise since Anil left, so I can only assume that they’ve moved on in a different direction.

I’ve had a lot of kind messages and support when I’ve tweeted about probably not being involved, so I want to take this opportunity to say thanks so much for all the support, it is very much appreciated.

Naz: “What rationale do you think Pakistan had in sending Ifti over Shadab?”

None that I can think of. Pakistan appear to rate Iftikhar much higher than I do - particularly in the middle order role that he’s likely to struggle with, given his poor strike rate against spin in the PSL in recent years. Shadab, on the other hand, has shown he’s a strong player of spin and therefore in my view, their decision made no sense.

Sunny: “Any players you think will now be 'overvalued' in auctions based on the world cup?”

This is always the case. Sam Curran will be one - of course, he’s a world-class all-rounder but I’d be very surprised if he was sold below 15 Cr, and ‘Chris Morris pricing’ is very possible. Furthermore, the recency bias of having the World Cup just before the IPL auction could get some lower-profile players deals too, such as Sikandar Raza, Liton Das, Taskin Ahmed, Bas de Leede and Josh Little.

However, of the quintet at this point, I’d only be looking at Little this year, and that would be for base price. De Leede could be good enough in the future but would be an investment only at this point, in my view.

Joe: “In your humble opinion......which of the big teams has the most 'room for growth' if they were to properly embrace data analysis? I'd assume India, and even though we won the tournament, that England too have big opportunities too”

Related - Mask: “Based on this WC, if you could pick one team each to give a makeover (tactically/selection-wise), which team would you pick and how would you go about it?”

All of them! I don’t believe any country are remotely close to exploiting the competitive advantages which can exist from being more data-driven. India and the West Indies in particular would be prime candidates for big growth with a more data-driven plan.

Nav: “Who makes it to your team of the tournament and stinkers of the tournament?”

Not doing stinkers, but my team of the tournament is below:-

Cricketology: “If Archer, Topley and Wood are available, what will be England's bowling attack ?”

Good question, but one that I’d file under two areas - 1) nice problem to have, and more importantly, 2) a problem that’s unlikely to manifest itself.

I’d imagine the percentage of matches which all three players have been fully fit and available over recent years has been very small, so there’s no evidence that they’ll consistently all be fully fit at the same time in the future either.