I picked Smith. He's the best batsman in the world. Two other options I guess and too early to pick Peter Borren.
I get the logic in such a big comp. There will be 40+ players picked before Gemmell gets another pick. People will pick specialist batsmen worse than him and maybe even specialist bowlers worse than him before Gemmell picks again. If you're only going to have one of the best 46 players in the world I can see why you'd want him to be an allrounder.
If you reckon Stokes is one of the best 48 quicks in the world, which is probably a fair punt, he should be opening the bowling in this comp. When you can pick a world class batsman to open the bowling for you it's a fair deal. I probably would've picked a bowler tbh but it's not dumb. Probably the smartest thing Gemmell will do all draft. I'm looking forward to Ashley Noffke coming out of retirement.
I'm also looking forward to Kohli getting injured for the semi-final and Captain's second best batsman getting a pair.
I hope you've got all Associate teams in the database. I'll be sure to be picking a few, and not just Namibians.
Yeah the ICup is still in there, and "ODIs counting for some players" mentioned in the rule changes helps a few of those guys as well.
On this, the later rounds will be ITSTL. I get the vibe compared to even six years ago there's far fewer FC freaks around. I guess the ODI rule changes might help though.
Good thing is that the cricket archive website with all the FC stats is behind a paywall, so there'll be less of stats whoring imo
There are going to be 432 players picked, people will find ways to stats whore at the end. That or they'll pick Damien Wright and Ashley Noffke, I guess.
Stats whoring at the back end is perfectly fine because nobody knows who the 10th highest run scorer in the Plunket Shield for the last 3 years or whatever is. Doing it up front is a bit lame.