British Boozers: 1. Andrew Strauss 2. Jacques Rudolph 3. Hashim Amla 4. Murray Goodwin 5. Marcus North 6. Chris Woakes 7. Craig Kieswetter 8. Graeme Swann 9. Brett Lee 10. Abdur Rauf 11. Nathan Bracken 12. Justin Kemp 13. Swapnil Asnodkar Corsair Prycers Gambhir Robert Key Mark Ramprakash Subramaniam Badrinath Samit Fatel Andrew Symonds Andrew McDonald James Foster Piyush Chawla Jimmy Anderson Ben Hilfenhaus . Sourav Ganguly Rebels CC 1. Graeme Smith 2. Marvan Atapattu 3. Ed Joyce 4. Martin van Jaarsveld 5. Hylton Ackerman 6. Ramnaresh Sarwan 7. Kamran Akmal 8. Mitchell Johnson 9. Yasir Arafat 10. Shane Warne 11. Nuwan Kulesakara 12. Abdul Razzaq 13. Jason Gillespie The Beers 1 Phil Jaques 2 Wasim Jaffer 3 Boeta Dippenaar 4 Jacques Kallis 5 Darren Lehmann 6 Brad Haddin 7 Andrew Hall 8 Shahid Afridi 9 Rangana Herath 10 Shoaib Akhtar 11 Doug Bollinger 12 Craig McMillan 13 Daryl Tuffey Caloundra Lighthouses 1. Chris Rogers 2. Tharanga Paranavitana 3. Shane Watson 4. David Hussey 5. Ashwell Prince 6. Yuvraj Singh 7. Lanka De Silva 8. James Hopes 9. Jerome Taylor 10. Ishant Sharma 11. Ajantha Mendis 12. Andre Adams Rams United 1. M. Trescothick 2. M. Vaughan 3. H. Gibbs 4. VVS. Laxman 5. M. Hussey 6. MS. Dhoni (c) (wk) 7. S. Styris 8. K. Mills 9. A. Mishra 10. Z. Khan 11. M. Hoggard 12. L. Malinga 13. B. Hogg Tunza CC 1. D Thornely 2. M Hayden 3. R Ponting (c) 4. K Pieterson 5. B Lara 6. C White 7. A Gilchrist 8. A Noffke 9. S Magoffin 10. S Tait 11. S MacGill 12. Michael Kasprowicz Jets CC 1. Justin Langer 2. Aakash Chopra 3. Stuart Law* 4. Hasan Raza 5. AB De Villiers + 6. Michael Bevan 7. Ryan Ten Doeschate 8. Andrew Flintoff 9. Ryan McLaren 10.Anil Kumble 11.Peter Siddle 12. Ryan Hinds 13. Nantie Hayward Sticky Wicket XI 1. Neil McKenzie 2. Imran Farhat 3. Thilan Samaraweera 4. Ross Taylor 5. Jean-Paul Duminy 6. Heath Streak 7. Mark Boucher 8. Daniel Vettori 9. Saqlain Mushtaq 10. Stuart Clark 11. Iain O'Brien 12. Dilhara Fernando Curb Crawlers CPL 1. 2.MA Carberry 3.AM Rahane 4.MJ Clarke 5.PD Collingwood 6.MJ Prior 7.JA Morkel 8. JEC Franklin 9.BR Dorey 10.U Gul 11.D Kaneria Hurricanes CPL 1. Chris Gayle 2. Sachin Tendulkar 3. Owais Shah 4. Mahela Jayawardene 5. Ian Bell 6. Sarfraz Ahmed 7. Dwayne Bravo 8. Stuart Broad 9. Paul Harris 10. Andre Nel 11. Glenn McGrath 12. Salman Butt Youssou N'Dour's Prime Minister's XI 1. Sanath Jayasuriya 2. Heino Kuhn 3. Brad Hodge 4. Jesse Ryder 5. Dale Benkenstein 6. Peter Fulton 7. Steve Tikolo 8. Ramesh Powar 9. Chaminda Vaas 10. Mark Davies 11. Makhaya Ntini 12. Irfan Pathan 13. Neil Wagner The Royal Maharajahs 1. Simon Katich 2. Alastair Cook 3. 4. Shivnarine Chanderpaul 5. 6. 7. Brendan McCullum 8. Murali Kartik 9. Morne Morkel 10. Shane Bond 11. Ryan Sidebottom Hartley CC 1. Cheteshwar Pujara 2. Fawad Alam 3. Rahul Dravid 4. Younis Khan 5. Jonathan Trott 6. 7. Ian Harvey 8. Shakib Al Hasan 9. Sreesanth 10. Graham Onions 11. Dale Steyn El Damo0003 1. Virender Sehwag 2. Phillip Hughes 3. Stephen Fleming* 4. Martin Love 5. Tillakaratne Mudiyanselage Dilshan 6. Steve Davies+ 7. Jacob Oram 8. Shaun Pollock 9. Monde Zondeki 10. <!-- / icon and title --> <!-- message -->Muttiah Muralitharan 11. Lonwabo Tsotsobe 12. Dirk Nannes 13. Rohit Sharma Porpoises 1. Nasir Jamshed 2. Matthew Sinclair 3. Kumar Sangakarra 4. Mohammed Yousuf 5. Misbah Ul-Haq 6. Angelo Matthews 7. Abhishek Nayar 8. Azhar Mahmood 9. Harbhajan Singh 10. Steve Harmison 11. Mohammed Asif 12. Umar Akmal 13. Imraan Khan
1 El Damo0003 (keeper the only negative IMO) 2 Jets CC 3 Rebels CC 4 The Beers (biased but whatevs) 5 The Royal Maharajahs 6 British Boozers 7 Rams United 8 Sticky Wicket XI 9 Youssou N'Dour's Prime Minister's XI 10 Porpoises 11 Corsair Prycers 12 Caloundra Lighthouses 13 Tunza CC 14 Curb Crawlers CPL 15 Hartley CC 16 Hurricanes
Tough call - especially as some teams have 9 players, and other 8. The Beers would be an obvious choice. The bowling looks solid with 2 decent quicks for the new ball, Kallis as first change, Hall a reliable option and Afridi and Lehmann as unspectacular spinning options. You could almost move Hall & Haddin down a spot and strengthen the batting more so. I think there's probably enough bowling in the team - such is the usefulness of Kallis. The Lighthouses look decent. Possibly a bit short in batting at the moment, but that could be easily remedied. Also quite like the look of the Hurricanes and Maharajas. Except maybe I'd move Ian Bell down to #9 in the 'Canes batting line up. Or drop him. Or feed him Rat Poison. Not a big fan of picking retirees or IPL/ICL only players, and I've rated some teams down accordingly.
Yeah, I agree with this, particularly as Lehmann's bowling really improved before he retired from First Class cricket - he'd be the best spinner in Australia by far if he was still playing. Hall gives him a lot of options given we're having 13 man squads though - he could bat him at 7 and let him share Kallis's overs, bat him at 8 and play him as a frontline bowler or maybe even leave him out depending on who else he signs. People are really focusing in on their First XIs but it's quite feasible to suggest someone will end up in poor form and you'll need to either make like-for-like swaps or change the balance a bit to carry them.
Yeah I think most of the teams have the potential to strengthen from here and become one of the best OR fold and make stupid decisions leaving them rather weak.
Yeah that's why I asked for draft confirmation because I am very much picking 13, not 11. I think I have 4 more selections and there will be two more frontline batsmen, and two frontline bowlers, one spinner, one quick..
I really, really rate the Eldamo0003 team tbh. Easily the best very top order thus far IMO. And realistically they just need solid quicks to support Murali. And they have Sehwag to bowl some pies.
Yeah I hope there is nothing stupid for the last round pick because as you said im picking 13 not 11.
I have a few allrounders in mind but im worried about how effected the retirees will be. So I might steer clear of a couple.
I thought Martin Love was a bit of a weak pick at the time. I was under the impression that he'd really gone into decline before retiring, but he hadn't really - he'd just been injured a bit. His actual run output was excellent. So I agree. He needs to stop being stubborn about Dilshan with the gloves though. Phil Hughes is actually the best wicket keeper in that team... not that he's actually that good.
Yeah, their only real weakness is one they should be able to fix, very easily. It just depends if they want to or not.
Love definitely did decline a little bit for 1-2 seasons, going into his last season. IIRC, he scored a couple of fifties and a hundred in the last couple of matches of his second last season when there were serious concerns about his form, and then had an awesome last season. But yeah, he clearly still had the ability when he retired, it was just the injuries and his age/mentality that led to his retirement.
Not a fan of ElDamo's bowling attack, personally. Obviously Murali's a strong point, but unconvinced by the selection of Yarpies on show.
Yeah, there were concerns about him, but whenever he was getting an uninterrupted run in the side he was actually doing fine it seems. In 2005/06 he played 12 games and averaged 50. In 2006/07 he played 5 games and averaged 45. In 2007/08 he played 3 games and averaged 19 (poor, but three games is certainly forgiveable). In 2008/09 he played 10 games and averaged 53. I don't see this as evidence of decline at all TBH. Retiring was definitely the right move for him given how well his body was (or wasn't, as the case was) holding up, but it's not like he was just getting picked on past glories or anything - he was still churning out the runs.
I've hardly seen any of Dilshan wicketkeeping but I don't think Hughes is great with the gloves at all. From what I can gather Dilshan just does whatever he can to stay in the team. I actually really rate the bloke, how he plays his cricket and I think Sri Lanka have caught on that they will win more tests with him than without him. I wouldn't let Hughes keep because I think it would adversely affect his batting. I still think they need to try and pick up one of the last couple of keepers who could maybe bat top 6 at a pinch.
You can't actually pick who keeps as such - the sim just gives the one with the highest keeping rating (or fielding rating, in the case where no keeper is actually picked at all) the gloves. And yes, making Hughes keep would affect his batting, but it's going to happen unless they pick another keeper. EDIT: Oh, and I've seen Dilshan keep on a handful of occasions and he was awful. He's a batting allrounder; he is not a wicket keeper.
