Fantasy Cricket

It’s that time of the year again where I get thoroughly over excited and start dreaming that I am going to win the fantasy cricket league. I think in the years since 1994 that I have been doing fantasy cricket leagues my highest league position was 18,500 which I was very impressed with at the time.

This year I’m pushing for a top 10,000 finish, if that happens then happy days. Picking my team this year I found to be very challenging, they have decided to have three different leagues, a county championship league, a Twenty20 league and an international league.

My County championship team has been selected and in a moment of weakness I asked my girlfriend if she wanted to do a team, to my shock she said she did. The next 10 minutes of her picking her team was what I can only describe as traumatic, there are many methods that can be used to pick a fantasy cricket team, her first method was to try and pick players that she had heard of but it means she would have only selected 7 players, then went for the ‘are they fit’ tactic again had to be abandoned as they were all England players and wouldn’t play that much. She was adamant that Cook and Broad had to be picked, she was having none of me trying to tell her that was pointless.

The final approach which was the one she decided upon was just a random selection process which she claims was based on last year’s performances. One of her selections Alviro Petersen from Glamorgan has made me think that was a super pick and made me think that I may add him to my team, maybe the aura of disdain that she shows towards cricket is all a front and in fact she’s a fanatic. I’m still confident my team will come out on top, I most certainly hope so or it really is a new low.

My Fantasy County Championship XI

Trescothick                    Somerset                       Capt

Shah                              Essex

Taylor                            Leicestershire

Maynard                        Surrey

Loye                              Northamptonshire

Davies                           Surrey

Stokes                           Durham

Panesar                         Sussex

Collymore                     Middlesex

Mendis                          Somerset

Tsotsobe                       Essex

Girlfriend XI

Petersen                       Glamorgan                    Capt

Cook                            Essex

Wagh                           Nottinghampshire

Smith                            Leicestershire

Nixon                            Leicestershire

Rashid                           Yorkshire

Broad                            Nottinghamshire

Woakes                         Warwickshire

Pattinson                        Nottinghamshire

Lucas                             Northamptonshire

Philips                            Essex