Coronavirus Cricket Auction Draft (Test)

FINAL: Which team would win on a slow dustbowl minefield?

  • Total voters
    11
  • Poll closed .

crappycraperson

"Resident cricket authority"
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Scheduled matches (1 per day):

Tue Apr 14: Moby vs Skills/Anant
Wed Apr 15:
Thu Apr 16: Crappy vs harshad
Fri Apr 17:


@harshad putting us down for Thursday. Let me know if you want to change
 
QF Matches

Samid

He's no Bilal Ilyas Jhandir
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QF matches:

Tue Apr 14: Moby vs Skills/Anant (Slow dustbowl minefield)
Wed Apr 15: EAP/TMH vs 12Oz (Green track)
Thu Apr 16: Crappy vs harshad (Slow dustbowl minefield)
Fri Apr 17: Norris vs Interval (Flat pancake road)
 
QF1: Moby vs Skills/anant

Samid

He's no Bilal Ilyas Jhandir
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Please vote for one of the teams that you believe would win on a slow dustbowl minefield.

Discussions encouraged. Write ups to follow.

Team @Moby
  1. Victor Trumper
  2. Sanath Jayasuriya
  3. Neil Harvey
  4. Viv Richards
  5. Greg Chappell
  6. AB de Villiers (wk)
  7. Imran Khan (c)
  8. Harold Larwood
  9. Clarrie Grimmett
  10. Hugh Tayfield
  11. Glenn McGrath

Team @Skills / @anant
  1. Jack Hobbs
  2. Graeme Smith (c)
  3. Ken Barrington
  4. Steve Smith
  5. Graeme Pollock
  6. Tony Greig
  7. BJ Watling (wk)
  8. Ravichandran Ashwin
  9. Alan Keith Davidson
  10. Andy Roberts
  11. Waqar Younis
 

Samid

He's no Bilal Ilyas Jhandir
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Team @Moby



Team Tactics​

I have gone with 6+4+1 line up: 6 specialist batsmen, 4 specialist bowlers and 1 GOAT All Rounder.

The biggest advantage for me here is that my spin duo is easily by far the better one in this match up, as compared to their counterparts.

Overall, with this being a dustbowl, I have gone with two of the greatest spinners of all time in Clarrie Grimmett and Hugh Tayfield. Grimmett is in the conversation for the greatest spinner of all time, while Tayfield's 9-53 was voted by Wisden as the greatest bowling performance of all time. The two in tandem will be absolutely devastating on this surface and bordering on unplayable once the cracks widen up.

That's not to say that the spinners are the only ones who can do the damage. The bowling is spearheaded by two GOAT fast bowlers forming possibly the greatest opening bowling partnership in all of test cricket. Imran Khan and Glenn McGrath will open the bowling, with Imran being well versed with the slow turners of the sub-continent, and McGrath being McGrath. The third pacer being Harold Larwood, the top marksman of the infamous bodyline series who made the job of scoring insanely impossible even for the legendary Aussie team under Bradman. Greg Chappell, Viv Richards and Sanath Jayasuriya will all chip in with some overs as the 6th bowler.

Overall, the bowling unit is going to absolutely enjoy this surface and getting 20 wickets will not be an issue whatsoever.

Coming to the batsmen, the batting is opened by one of the greatest Australian openers of all time in Victor Trumper. One of the most stylish and elegant batsmen to come out of the island, it wasn't just his style of play but the fact that he was able to make bulk of his runs on the toughest of wickets. He batted at a time when pitches looked more like puddles, yet came out as one of the best batsmen of that era and on a touch wicket, he will be an ideal man to start the proceedings. Partnering him would be Sanath Jayasuriya, another islander who lived on dustbowls his whole life and plundered the subcontinent wickets for runs. A great player of spin.

Coming in at 3 is Neil Harvey, another Aussie great and a massive run getter, averaging close to 50 with 21 tons, and an expert in grinding out in tough situations with the typical elegance of a left hander. Following him is none other than the GOAT Sir Vivian Richards. Absolute plunderer of any bowling attack that dares to come at him, an insane addition to this team and takes the batting unit to another level. Following him is the fellow great of the game from the same era in Greg Chappell, averaging over 53! with majority of his runs coming in during the toughest bowling era of all time. Another guy who can stay on the pitch in the toughest of conditions while gathering runs at a brilliant rate, a proper match winner. Following them is the modern great and the best batsman of his era, AB De Villiers. In my opinion, he has the greatest batting range that has been seen in this sport, someone who can easily destroy an attack with a flurry of boundaries but can just as easily stay on the pitch for fecking HOURS to save a test match facing a plethora of deliveries. Below are his best test scores and look at the balls faced and minutes spent on the crease. That's the ideal man needed at #6 who can bat with the tail and save a match when needed, or accelerate the proceedings with a good score on the board.

Lastly, Imran Khan comes in at no. 7, a fantastic batsman himself who actually became a top tier middle order batsman in the latter half of his career, but here since we are looking at his bowling peak, his batting still being good enough is a great asset to have at #7.


List of De Villiers' centuries - showing his insane range.​

The team is well balanced at this stage and brimming with top tier talent in both batting and bowling units. Viv, Chappell, AB, Imran, Grimmett and McGrath are all absolute ATGs, while the likes of Sanath, Harvey, Trumper, Larwood and Tayfield have great generational credentials and will be excellent in terms of providing adequate support while being well capable of making the difference themselves.

With the twin spin attack, they will relish this dustbowl and will have a massive advantage based on the conditions. As the pitch starts to crack and break, Grimmett and Tayfield will be practically unplayable and can run through a batting line up.


Selected Player Profiles

Victor Trumper

Trumper at the zenith of his fame was great under all conditions of weather and ground. He could play quite an orthodox game when he wished to, but it was his ability to make big scores when orthodox methods were unavailing that lifted him above his fellows. Trumper was, in proportion, more to be feared on treacherous wickets than on fast, true ones. No matter how bad the pitch might be from the combined effects of rain and sunshine, he was quite likely to get 50 runs, his skill in pulling good-length balls amounting to genius. Of this fact our English bowlers had convincing evidence day after day during the season of 1902. Trumper paid four visits to this country - in 1899, 1902, 1905, and 1909 - but it was in 1902 that he reached his highest point.

In that summer of wretched weather he scored 2570 runs in thirty-five matches for the Australian team, with the wonderful average, in the circumstances, of 48. He was as consistent as he was brilliant, and did not owe his average to a few exceptional scores. Of eleven innings of over a hundred, the biggest was 128. Trumper did not again touch the same level in this country. He played very well in 1905 and 1909, but he was no longer pre-eminent. He was fifth in the averages in 1905, and in 1909 he was overshadowed by Bardsley and Ransford. In the latter year, however, he was seen at his best, notably against England at The Oval, when he played DW Carr's googlies with perfect ease, and in the second match against MCC at Lord's. When he came here first, in 1899, he jumped at once into the front rank, playing a splendid innings of 135 not out against England at Lord's and scoring 300 not out against Sussex at Brighton. His innings at Lord's was in itself sufficient to prove that Australia had found a world's batsman. Nothing could have been better.

Neil Harvey

6k+ runs @48 with 21 tons.​

One of Australia's all-time favourite cricketing sons, Neil Harvey was a gifted left-hand batsman, brilliantly athletic fielder, and occasional offspin bowler. On account of the richness of his talents, he served Victoria, New South Wales and Australia with great distinction during a first-class career which spanned the 16-year period between 1946-47 and 1962-63. Harvey was an electrifying batsman who thrilled spectators with the splendour of his strokeplay.

He possessed a masterful technique as well as a full range of shots and he displayed to cricket followers a superbly steadfast temperament right from the moment, as a teenager, that he played his opening first-class innings. Throughout a career which ultimately netted him in excess of 20,000 first-class runs, bowlers rarely found a way of disrupting his concentration or curbing his attacking instincts. He also possessed disarming power for a man of relatively short height. There will be many performances for which he will be remembered but foremost among them were his 153 against India in his second Test (an innings which made him the youngest-ever Australian to score a Test century); his 112 in the celebrated Leeds Test of 1948; his 151 in Durban in 1949-50; and his highest Test score of 205 against South Africa in Melbourne in 1952-53. Most discussions of Neil Harvey's career are also considered to be incomplete without mention of his achievement in amassing six centuries in his first 13 Test innings alone.


Greg Chappell

7k+ runs @~54 with 24 tons.​

Upright and unbending, with a touch of the tin soldier about his bearing, Greg Chappell was the outstanding Australian batsman of his generation. Though he had an appetite for big scores, it was his calm brow and courtly manner that bowlers found just as disheartening. He made a century in his first and final Tests, and 22 more in between - although perhaps the outstanding batting of his career left no trace on the record-books, his 621 runs at 69 in five unauthorised World Series Cricket "SuperTests" in the Caribbean in 1979, off a West Indian attack of unprecedented hostility. Less empathic as a captain than his elder brother Ian, he nonetheless won 21 of his 48 Tests and lost only 13. He lost the Ashes in 1977, but reclaimed them in 1982-83. His feat of scoring centuries in each innings of his captaincy debut is unequalled.


Harold Larwood
​

Larwood was the key figure in the never-to-be-allowed-to-be-forgotten `Bodyline' Test series of 1932-33, when England's supercilious, icy and provocative captain Douglas Jardine instructed him to bowl what they both insisted on calling ` leg theory' at the Australian batsmen. Larwood hurrying Don Bradman into indiscretions and taking his wicket four times in eight Test innings (and twice in the only other match in which they were in opposition, the Australian XI match at Melbourne before the First Test). Larwood's classical action, copied by countless schoolboys - including Ray Lindwall in Sydney - culminated in a side-on delivery, the ball's velocity touching the highest ever recorded.

Around 5ft 8ins, but strongly-built with wide shoulders and long arms, he had a smooth, rhythmic approach and a high arm action. His speed was truly exceptional, and because of his lack of height, his bouncer tended to skid, veering into the ribs rather than wastefully over the head. The schoolboy Ray Lindwall drew upon this action after watching through the pickets at the SCG in 1932-33. In more recent times, the Pakistan express bowler Waqar Younis has had much of Larwood's movement about his run-up and delivery. Larwood's stock ball snapped in from the off, and in days when leg-before dismissals could be granted only from balls that pitched between wicket and wicket, he was denied many a dismissal that would have been given to succeeding generations of bowlers.


Clarrie Grimmett
​

For all his briskness, the ingenuity in each of his deliveries seldom gave the greatest of batsmen any moment of peace. Grimmett was the most confirmed miser. He hated runs scored off him and only once in his career did he commit the cardinal sin of bowling a no-ball. Indeed, tidiness rather than turn was his weapon of choice.

His variations were intriguing while his accuracy metronomic. He seldom beat the batsman with huge turn. He fooled them with subtle deceptive alterations while maintaining tantalising line and length. Hardly anyone witnessed him bowl a long hop. While he excelled at the orthodox leg-break and the wrong ’un, his greatest contribution to the abstract art of leg-spin was probably the development of the flipper. Squeezed out of the front of the hand with the thumb and first and second fingers, this productive delivery was perfected by Grimmett through years and years of practice.

Grimmett was so hooked to the flipper that once Don Bradman joked that he had forgotten his orthodox leg-break. That innings he bowled the Australian legend by pitching on the great man’s leg stump and taking the off bail.


Hugh Tayfield
​

Hugh Tayfield was one of the most successful bowlers ever produced by South Africa and one of the greatest off-spinners the game has seen. Between 1949-50 and 1960 he took 170 wickets in Tests at a cost of 25.91 in 37 matches. Tayfield took more wickets per Test match (4.59) then either Jim Laker or Lance Gibbs (4.19 and 3.91), and though he was not in Laker's class as a spinner of the ball, he was exceptionally accurate and could bowl all day without wavering. He preferred to bowl over the wicket, extremely close to the stumps, which gave him the perfect angle for the ball to drift away and break back. Though his variations were subtle, his field settings were often flamboyantly unorthodox, with a large, tempting gap around extra cover but two straightish silly mid-ons waiting for the mistimed shot. Tayfield was, with Trevor Goddard, at the centre of South Africa's containing cricket of the 1950s; he bowled 137 consecutive balls without conceding a run against England at Durban in 1956-57. But, with South Africa's superb fielding to back him up, he ran through teams as well: he took 37 wickets that series at 17.18, including nine for 113 in the second innings of the Fourth Test at Johannesburg, when he bowled unchanged on the last day and sent down 35 eight-ball overs; the longer he bowled the more inhibited England's batsmen became. Tayfield was chaired off the field.

---

Team @Skills /@anant

1. Jack Hobbs
2. Graeme Smith (c)
3. Ken Barrington
4. Steve Smith
5. Graeme Pollock
6. Tony Greig
7. BJ Watling (WK)
8. Ravichandran Ashwin
9. Alan Keith Davidson
10. Andy Roberts
11. Waqar Younis



Opening the batting we have, in Moby's own words, the greatest opener of all time - Jack Hobbs. Named as one of the XI Wisden Crickets of the 20th century & has racked up runs in a long-ass career that was disrupted by WWI. Partnering him is one of the modern greats & one the very best openers post Gavaskar. Graeme Smith is tough bastard & was the leader of the SA team that eventually became the best team team in the world. A 4th innings average of 51 tells you everything you need to know about Smithy.

Following them you have Ken Barrington who has the 3rd highest career batting average of anyone with more than 6000 runs. His lowest average in any country he played in was 44. You'd think his overall career batting of 58 is freakish but the man averages 74 at no. 3 along 13 of his 20 centuries coming at 1 down. Following that you have Steve Smith at 4 - the sandpaper man. A modern great and a statistical outlier in current cricket with his average of 62. Smith can and has carried limp middle orders for the last decade for Australia, now imagine what he can do with the support he has in my team. Then we have following them another freakish outlier statistical outlier in cricket - Graeme Pollock. Another 60+ averaging batsman in this team. What I've assembled here is a team of statistical outliers. Go to cricinfo, sort all time batsman by averages and my lads feature among them.



The lower middle order is the definition of solid. Greig & Watling come in with excellent averages of around 40 each - considering they've batted their careers in positions where you could be required to see off the new ball, shepherd the tale or do a full on recovery mission. Supporting them is Ashwin at 8 who has 4 test centuries to his name & was at one point showing promise even as a number 6.

Davidson himself is a very solid lower order batsman averaging 24.59 with 5 half centuries. Andy Roberts also knew his way around at a bat too, with 3 test half centuries.

The bowlers




Andy Roberts lead the great WI bowling attack of the 70s and 80s with terrifying pace, unnerving accuracy & enough pace to knock your head off. Supporting him we have one of the best strike bowlers of all time in Waqar Younis. Younis' ability to take wickets quickly has rarely ever been matched in test cricket, and as today he still has the 2nd best bowling S/R of any player with over 200 wickets. Also one of the original and best abusers of reverse swing, make him deadlier as the ball gets older. Completing the attack we have a left-hander. Davidson took 186 wickets in 44 Tests, at the excellent average of 20.53 - 2nd best of anyone with more than 100 wickets who played after the First World War.

If there's spin on offer Ravichandran Ashwin is about as deadly an option as you can wish for. One of India's key weapons in their rise to becoming the Number 1 ranked Test Team in the world. Was the fastest bowler to reach 200 test wickets. Supporting him we have Tony Greig who's more than adequate support spin bowler.

Why we win?
  • Top 5 are all studs. Nothing else to be said.
  • Deep as feck lower order, means the top order can bat without any worries. We bat till 10 and our 8-9 are genuine all-rounders.
  • R Ashwin is a monster on India's spinning tracks and the key component of their home dominance and rise to World No.1 on the back of that dominance.
  • 2 spin options on a spinning track are the key to victory. Greig is a more than adequate second spinner.
  • We have a few options in pure pace with Waqar, Andy Roberts slow/fast bouncer combos and Davidson being a left arm bowler.
Why Moby doesn't win?
  • Feck Moby.
  • He's a cheat & tried to con you all just yesterday. If it wasn't for me, he would've done it. Now's the time to get him back. Vote against him and you don't even need to explain your vote.
  • He's stacked his team with pre-stone age players who we're not even sure if they ever existed. feck that, don't fall for this shit. He's playing you guys like a flute if you fall for it. Don't be a hipster and pretend to know more about cricket's history than you do.
  • Feck Moby.
 

Skills

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  • He's stacked his team with pre-stone age players who we're not even sure if they ever existed. feck that, don't fall for this shit. He's playing you guys like a flute if you fall for it. Don't be a hipster and pretend to know more about cricket's history than you do.
Case in point :

The biggest advantage for me here is that my spin duo is easily by far the better one in this match up, as compared to their counterparts.

Overall, with this being a dustbowl, I have gone with two of the greatest spinners of all time in Clarrie Grimmett and Hugh Tayfield. Grimmett is in the conversation for the greatest spinner of all time, while Tayfield's 9-53 was voted by Wisden as the greatest bowling performance of all time. The two in tandem will be absolutely devastating on this surface and bordering on unplayable once the cracks widen up.
Click to expand...
 

Moby

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Grimmett is easily superior to Ashwin, and Tayfield as the second spinner absolutely shits on Tony fecking Greig.

On a dustbowl, that pretty much settles it. Not to mention my fast bowling unit is also easily the better one here.
 

Skills

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Moby said:
Grimmett is easily superior to Ashwin, and Tayfield as the second spinner absolutely shits on Tony fecking Greig.

On a dustbowl, that pretty much settles it. Not to mention my fast bowling unit is also easily the better one here.
Click to expand...
:lol:
 

Skills

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Moby said:
Yeah that's a fair point, but that still balances with the fact that those who overpaid for 2-3 players had to contend with leftovers in the initial draft. As someone being in that position, I can say that selling McGrath isn't really a great decision for me and was pretty much forced. I can buy 2 players for that value from the remaining pool and it won't be as good as having him.

Either ways, that's all academic. What we need to decide is how to proceed right now. If @Samid is sticking by the decision earlier then you can count me out of the draft.
Click to expand...
Clarie Grimmett & Hugh Tayfield. 2 of the 10m cannon fodder he was complaining about having to deal with in his team to justify his cheating.
 

Mani

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  • He's a cheat & tried to con you all just yesterday. If it wasn't for me, he would've done it. Now's the time to get him back. Vote against him and you don't even need to explain your vote.
Click to expand...
:lol:
 

2mufc0

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From what I've read Grimmett is a rightful legend, don't know much about Tayfield tbf.
 

2mufc0

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But yeah relying on Tony Greig as one of your main bowlers isn't great.
 
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