Athlai picks Best and Worst Squad Picks CPL 4 (Complete)

Benny
Team name: The Schooners XI
Name Rating: B-

By itself, Schooners is a pretty cool sounding name. The boats are pretty gun, but this is 100% the glass and while a beer related name is always solid. It's far too Australian for me to really enjoy. No thank you.

Squad:
1. David Warner
2. Janneman Malan
3. Marques Ackerman
4. Shaun Marsh
5. Dawid Malan
6. Risabh Pant
7. MS Dhoni +
8. James Pattinson
9. Dane Piedt
10. Chadd Sayers
11.Beuran Hendricks

12. Yuzvendra Chahal
13. Chris Gayle
14. Ryan McLaren
15. Colin Ackerman
16. Fidel Edwards
17. David Miller
18. (Unpicked)

Squad Depth: A-
Great squad, theres the odd iffy pick every now and then but he always follows it up with an absolute steal. Expecting this team to make the top 8. May struggle away in dust bowls though.

Best Pick: Chris Gayle - Round 13
Morgs on Gayle: Very good pick this late. A world-class opener in his prime and still decent in the short-form.
Cribb's Best Pick: Shaun Marsh - Round 5
Morgs on SMarsh: Probably the premier Shield batsman right now, and has a decent Test record too. Good pick.
Worst Pick: Janneman Malan - Round 6
Morgs on Journeyman: Good pick, though not a lot of track record behind him yet. Still, the same applies for most of the other quality batting options left over.

Janneman Malan is a good player, but he was definitely taken too early in round 6. I think picks like David Miller, Edwards and Gayle going so ridiculously late absolutely more than make up for that though. Gun team and a real Dark Horse to go far.

 

Santner > Nofal (noob owned)

 

Yeah I felt that Benny's first XI was a bit mediocre on the whole, but he's probably had the best last five picks of the entire draft.

 

He made the bold strategy to not pick his best XI players in his first XI picks. Some serious late gold in there.

 

Cabinet96
Team Name: Mediocrity CC
Name rating: B+

You know it's a good name when there is an extra little sting when you lose to them. No one wants to get beaten by mediocrity but it'll be the fate of more than a few teams I suspect.

Squad:
Elgar
Dhawan
Gurkeerat Singh Mann
Vince
Pandey
Carey (+)
Moeen Ali
Sean Abbott
Henry
Olivier
Bumrah

Shahbaz Nadeem
Tom Cooper
Tom Bailey
Manoj Tiwary
Steven Davies
Ben Sanderson

Squad Depth: B-
I started writing my analysis on this team assuming incorrectly that the Abbott Cabinet had was Kyle Abbott. If it was Kyle Abbott I think this would be the best attack in the tournament, but instead it's just a good attack. Unfortunately the batting is very sparse with not a huge amount to come in off the ranks. Cooper or Tiwary will probably end up playing a lot of games as you try to find batsman form this season imo.

Best Pick: Alex Carey - Round 7
Morgs on Carey: Has been in pretty gun form recently, and has also done well at ODI level. Good pick.
Cribb's Best Pick: Moeen Ali - Round 4
Morgs on Moeen: Has been patchy recently which worries me somewhat. He's on the fringe of being a great option and being a bit of a no-rounder as things stand. One pick which has huge variance in how he might perform, still it's hard to argue that this isn't great value on paper though.
Worst Pick: Gurkeerat Singh Mann - Round 11
Morgs on Gurk: Yeah, don't really think a lot of this pick. FC record nothing special given the quality of Indian domestics, and while he can bowl I guess I'm not sure whether another 6th bowling option was needed.

Gurkeerat going R11 was a massive blunder, bloke probably shouldn't even have been picked by R17. Moeen was a gun pick and is one of the better allrounders in the world for CPL and if he has a strong season then that'll be great for Cab. I reckon Alex Carey was an absolute coup in round 7 with ODIs contributing to overall CPL rating now. Unfortunately this is a squad that I expect may be destined to fulfill the definition of it's team name. Mediocrity.

 

Alex
Team name: Barbarians
Name Rating: A-

Can't go wrong with a classic.

Squad:
1. Alastair Cook*
2. Hassan Azad
3. Karun Nair
4. Kedar Jadhav
5. Peter Handscomb
6. Matthew Wade+
7. Ravi Ashwin
8. Wayne Parnell
9. Tom Curran
10. Tim Southee
11. Imran Khan
——————————————
12. Liam Livingstone
13. Akila Dananjaya
14. Leus du Plooy
15. Sam Robson
16. Axar Patel
17. Boyd Rankin
18. Unpicked

Squad Depth: B+
I think this is a very solid first XI and squad, and if CPL was a squad of 13 I think this could be absolutely top tier but there's a few weaker wider picks here. I don't think Akila, Imran Khan or Boyd Rankin will deliver as much as you want them to and there are some question marks about the middle order that could go astray.

Best Pick: Leus du Plooy - Round 14
Morgs on Plooy: Yeah, I think you got a bit Ruan Pietersen'd here. Did have an OK county season but it wasn't incredible and was in Div 2, and beyond that he's only really scored runs in SC cricket. Not great.
Cribb's Best Pick: Matthew Wade - Round 5
Morgs on Wade: Has been in insane form the last two years; can keep too. Great pic.
Worst Pick: Akila Dananjaya - Round 12
Morgs on Akila: On domestic form a pretty ordinary pick, but forunately he's played enough internationals and done enough in them to make this pick viable. I like it especially given Cribb has said he won't be nerfed for chucking.


The past year has been cruel to Akila, he'd have been really good in CWPL with ODIs included but 2019 was just not his year. Might have been okay pick around now but went too soon. I reckon du Plooy was a marvelous late pick. Reckon this team may struggle to escape the middle of the pack.

 

FTR most of du Plooy's FC record comes from the 3-day stuff. Makes his record look a fair bit worse in practice than it is on paper.

Also didn't Akila take a 5-fer against New Zealand last year?

 

Yes, and this is why I had Akila listed because I thought he'd be gun. But no. No he wasn't. People need to not disregard 3-day stuff outright, as long as they don't average 70 in 3-day and 20 in the 4-day stuff in Saffa, they're probably still pretty fucking good.

 

Yeah maybe. Just a bit concerned about him only playing three games of proper cricket and only averaging 30 in it. Whereas his 3-day average is around 50. He did do well in county cricket admittedly.

 

Have added morgie opinions

 

Ha, thanks.

Looks like our opinions on Alex's picks are virtually the complete opposite lol.

 

Baxter
Team Name: (Not Announced)
Name rating: F

If Marcuss' drafting so far is anything to go by he will pick a name about an hour after they're due.

Squad:
S van Zyl
P Shaw
Ian Bell
P van Biljon
O Pope
B Foakes
L Gregory
M Steketee
N Lyon
J Anderson

T Astle
B Brown
A Shehzad
J Faulkner
R Clarke
A Gunaratne
(Unpicked)

Squad Depth: A
I think Marcuss' draft started just pretty good. It wasn't bad, it wasn't great. It was just standard Marcuss jammy domestic greats. But where Marcuss really shines, is in that later round period where we start delving deeper to find gun players and he just consistently finds them and has built himself a hell of a squad. Top 8 destined for sure.

Best Pick: Faulkner - Round 15
Morgs on Faulkner: Hasn't played much cricket that counts in recent history which could be a problem. He was a good enough cricketer in his prime that he would've been taken in the first three-four rounds about five years ago so that might help a bit and his ODI bowling form remained better for longer than I expected so he might still be OK but it's a gamble even at this point.
Cribb's Best Pick: Ollie Pope - Round 3
Morgs on Pope: A reach, I think. Still a pretty small sample size in his FC record and he hasn't done it batting Top 4 either, which is a bit of a concern given this is quite a bit of a step up from county cricket. He does have a lot of upside though.
Worst Pick: L Gregory - Round 6
Morgs on Gregory: Like Gregory for example! () This pick is a good one, though maybe not the Somerset all-rounder I'd have gone first.

No bad picks here. Gregory maybe one round early. I hate this stupid side. I hate it so much.

 

Yeah haha.

I think in hindsight I was wrong on Pope. He managed to find good enough Top 4 bats to mitigate him being a specialist 5 and on paper it's no doubt a quality pick. Still not sure what to make of the Faulkner pick though.

With Gregory I don't think Baxter really had many poor picks so I guess in that case naming him as the worst was fair enough.

 

Hunter
Team Name: Blueys Cricket Club
Name rating: D

For one of the most iconic CPL players this has to be one of the worst names. So bullshit lazy Australian. Zero cool factor. The only trade you desperately need this season is to trade Dev to give you a better fucking team name.

Squad:
1. FDM Karunaratne
2. DP Sibley
3. D Conway
4. JL Denly
5. SW Ambris
6. M Rizwan
7. JO Holder
8. S Muthusamy
9. TJ Murtagh
10. I Sharma
11. HNA Conway / JM Holland

12. JM Holland / HNA Conway
13. SA Northeast
14. RA Reifer
15. F Zaman
16. A Bramble
17. Kevin O'Brien

Squad Depth: A
The spiritual opposite of Marcuss where the ruthless picking of guns is tempered by them all having a bit of charismatic flair. An easy team to like and there is a fair bit of depth here. Any issues that may have risen with from the odd poor pick, is overcome by Holder, you'd lose 1 to 2 points on the team average if Holder wasn't here but WAG he is.

Best Pick: Jason Holder - Round 1
Morgs on Holder: Probably at least a Top 10 bowler in the world, but more significantly is that he's comfortably the best batsmen of the elite quicks; the only one that could realistically bat Top 6. Great pick.
Cribb's Best Pick: Devon Conway - Round 4
Morgs on Conway: First non-Test player picked (IIRC Prez was skipped). There were a couple of safer options still standing admittedly but it's hard to argue against his recent FC form and it won't be long before he actually does play Tests. A pretty fair pick at that point.
Worst Pick: S Muthusamy - Round 10
Morgs on Muthusamy: Not sure what to make of this choice. Strikes me as somewhat no-roundery, but I guess bowling spin in South Africa isn't easy. It's not a stinker but maybe not my choice.

Muthusamy lol. Don't accept any trade for him guys. It's a shame Sibley started scoring runs since he was picked as well. Stop improving your players after you've selected them ffs. Top 8 bound.