I’ve joined JRod’s Fantasy Cricket League, should be a bit of a laugh. Here’s the steps to choosing a Fantasy Cricket Team
Step 1 – Pick a name
I thought Bastard Monkeys would nicely capture the spirit in which I hope for this series to be played. Unfortunately CricInfo had other ideas, advising me that “Your team name seems to contain objectionable words. Please modify your team name in order to proceed”. Seems you can’t say Monkey even in your fantasies.
Step 2 – Identify the team lists.
This is a hell of a lot harder than you might imagine. Even the Cricinfo Scorecard shows 15 players in each team, and kickoff is 2 or 3 hours away. It’s fair to say there’s some guesswork involved here.
Step 3 – Identify NSW Representation
We all know that the best cricketers come from New South Wales, so it makes sense to fit as many of them as possible into any Fantasy. Thus my fantasy team has:
Step 4 – Conform to Comp Restrictions
This comp requires a mix of Aus/Ind players. Fortunately there’s only 5 from NSW in the likely Aussie squad so I haven’t broken any rules yet. The good folks at cricinfo generated some random numbers for the salary caps as they appear to completely ignore form and ability. Taking this into account, the remainder of my squad is:
Step 5 – Annoint a captain
Obviously he would have to hail from NSW, Michael Clarke is my choice due to his hot missus all round record against India.