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Thursday Speed Draft

Matt79

Global Moderator
Awww shucks. Thought my team may just have had Joe's measure, especially after our preliminary meetings, but Joe's boys stood up in the final. Well done to him, his team topped the table, and looked a very strong team throughout the process, so you have to give it up for them as deserving winners. Bloody Gavaskar saved your ass in the 5th test, but my guys finally succumbed to fatigue at the end of a long series in the 6th - a tad disappointing apart from Sehwag.

The sim was interesting - not sure I agree with all the results it threw up - some pretty useful attacks struggled more than you'd have thought, but then, I suppose they were bowling to some very fine batting line ups.

For my team, I thought the sim did illustrate the value of having a 6-7-8-9 of Gilchrist, Greig, Imran and Pollock. My bowling, like everyone's, was pretty good, but Greig and especially Imran saved me a lot with their runs.

It would be interesting to see people's votes based solely on teams on paper, without the sim, and how they matched the sim results. I think the sim captures better aspects like evenness of players - often in VC4, its the second tier players who play a blinder and win a match for you, whereas when looking at paper people tend (in my experience) to focus on the absolute superstars in the team.

Liked Vimesy's write ups as well. VC4 is fun like that, reconstructing events from it's scorecards. There was a ripper like that in a match earlier where Dravid was out, b. Marshall, 0 (5). You could picture Marshall working him over with an over (well four balls) of unplayable deliveries, before eventually knocking poor Rahul's stumps flying. Would have been a classic over up there with Lillee's real-life effort to Viv.
 
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chaminda_00

Hall of Fame Member
Having a look through our performance. I think our batting overall was as good as anyone. Where we struggled was picking guys like Dev and Flintoff who statiscally are poor and therefore don't perform well in sims. Though looking back I probably should have either picked a bowler earlier or pick a better bowler then Flintoff and a keeper like Dhoni who would offer more with the bat. MacGill flopped as well, so that didn't help either.

Basically had a two man bowling attack in the end and we leaked too many runs from the other ends. I guess it is the whole balance between picking a side for stats and a side that you think will perform in real life. Though others did get that balance better then I did tbh.
 

G.I.Joe

International Coach
My non-sim assessment:

Can't speak for my own team, I'd be pretty biased. However I was glad to have arguably the best opening pair possible (Gavaskar and Hayden), and batting down to 7, plus 4 frontline bowlers and a proper 5th bowler in Kallis.

Toward the end of the draft, I was of the opinion that Matt had a superb team (http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/cricket-chat/41312-thursday-speed-draft-3.html#post1792739), and the sim served to confirm it. It is a lineup that has both the star quotient as well as the depth that is necessary to dig itself out of a hole.

Goughy had an excellent bowling attack, a quality 4 pronged pace attack. The batting could perhaps have been stronger. Jayasuriya and Yousuf (despite the average) were the weak links IMO.

Somerset had perhaps the best bowling attack of the lot. Wasim, Waqar, Warne, Murali and Botham is enough to make one cream his pants. Other than the inexplicable lack of turning surfaces, I think the batting was a let down. Barry Richards overcame his lack of test experience to end up second highest run getter, but Inzamam was a major let down against the best attacks (the sim couldn't have scripted it better). Stewart as opener was a smart move, especially since he was relieved of the wicket keeping duties.

Cool Runnings had the awesome pairing of Sachin and Lara, but their batting seemed to end abruptly at 5. Kapil and Flintoff at 6 and 7 were batting a place too high for my liking. That lineup would own in a real life situation, but more depth might have been needed against the all-time teams they faced. IMO the team needed a lot more specialists to complement Sachin, Lara, Mcgrath and Marshall.

NUFAN and pskov's teams acquited themselves very well. I was tempted to use the phrase 'punched above their weight', but that would be incorrect. They were indeed quality teams. As NUFAN mentioned, 25% win percentage is nothing to be scoffed at given the opposition they were up against.
 

Matt79

Global Moderator
Yeah, VC4, like any quickly completed sim, falls down a bit in capturing things like Freddie's performances not quite being reflected in his stats... All the guys who picked specialist spinners suffered for doing so, despite Joe's explanation that there was no reason for that to have been the case - passing strange that was.
 

chaminda_00

Hall of Fame Member
TBF to me and lack of specialist. The best keeper batsmen were gone before I made a pick. It makes a huge difference not having a top line keeper batsmen in sims that don't take into account keeping. Looking back I should have taken a punt on AB or Hashan Till. If I knew we were using VC4 I would have picked one of those two as my keeper.
 

Matt79

Global Moderator
I think I pretty much ignored the sim aspect of it when picking a team - just tried to pick a team that in equal parts was 'best-available' combined with 'players I like'.

But your points on the limits of sims is well made. It would be great if they could build in a function to capture team's fielding prowess, but then, we'd probably need a usuable statistical ranking of such things, which doesn't really exist.
 

chaminda_00

Hall of Fame Member
I think I pretty much ignored the sim aspect of it when picking a team - just tried to pick a team that in equal parts was 'best-available' combined with 'players I like'.

But your points on the limits of sims is well made. It would be great if they could build in a function to capture team's fielding prowess, but then, we'd probably need a usuable statistical ranking of such things, which doesn't really exist.
ITC does take into account fielding. Last time I picked one these side we used that and I had Walcott as my keeper. He was useless so I had to put Taibu in as the keeper. That was probably the main reason why I went for Healy over a better batsmen that keeps. I still have nightmares over his drops from Murali.

Regardless of all that there were some limitations to my side and I always felt even using other sims we were short in batting and bowling. But that had a lot to do with missing early picks and my balance picks (a spinner and keeper).
 

Matt79

Global Moderator
Do you have a link (or even the full name for ITC) that I could download it from? I like VC4, but keen to try alternatives...
 

chaminda_00

Hall of Fame Member
Just to confirm the cheapy include Matt, GI Joe, Welldone, Goughy and Pskov. Any others guys?

EDIT: sent
 
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Somerset

Cricketer Of The Year
I wouldn't mind it too Chaminda, if thats ok. I'll message you my cricketmail address using the public message feature.
 

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