From the Pavilion

[honestbharani]

He sees things that mere mortals cannot.......... Cnerd, the superhero we need but do not deserve.

 

[cnerd123]

Who are you talking to?

****er's post got deleted

you're more than welcome to join Stumped too SOC

 

[Son Of Coco]

Have snuck through to first in Youth 1.1 - went up by 2 points last week, and then extended that to 4 today when 2 + 3 tied. If I can win next week, I am 'dormie' with one game to go, assuming the team in 2nd wins, which they should. The last time I was in this position it was completely inexplicable as my team was quite a bit weaker than many of the others in the league, yet we worked ourselves into a position where we were two wins up with two to go, only to lose the last two and come second on NRR. I have a far better team this season, so we won't get many better chances than this.

We won...reeled off the last two wins to take out the title for the first time. Needed to win the last after the team coming last reversed their order/bowled batsmen and got absolutely flogged by the team coming second. A loss would have seen us go down on NRR. Luckily, we got up by 6 wickets. Have started this season at the top of the table after 3 games too, but the wheels will start to wobble in Week 5 when I lose my keeper and spinner. The replacements aren't exactly awe-inspiring.

 

[andruid]

How are Kenya these days?

 

[Son Of Coco]

How are Kenya these days?

I'm not sure how they are going. I have a pretty good Kenyan youth all-rounder in my team, but haven't really been following their progress.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Got up again in Youth 1.1 last season. We only lost three players during the season due to them turning 21, and were 3 wins ahead with 3 games to go. Last time that happened (Season 44), we lost all 3 to go down on RR, but this time we romped it home, winning all 3. The highlight was the last game where we took on the Australian no 1 team - the only team we lost to all season. This time around we got up by 40 runs, validating our top spot.

This season we're losing 8 players over the 15 weeks, so it's going to be interesting.

 

[NZTailender]

Still Navman Cheesecake. Still going, just about. I think I occasionally end up in the same division as geg.

2 out of 4 divisions this season

 

[Jarquis]

good contest that.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Last 4 seasons in Youth 1.1 have seen us go 1st, 1st, 2nd, 2nd. We're currently 1st again, but we're losing about 8 players over the course of the season, so it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. There seems to be less quality players around on a consistent basis to pick up on the transfer market, and when they're there, you need to get in and pick them up pretty quickly. We've planned ahead a little, but are still a couple of players short for those leaving towards the end of the season. The price some players go for can be pretty ridiculous at times.

The academy guys I get have been ****ing woeful over the past few seasons too.

If anyone is up for a Youth or Senior friendly, we're The Dutch Ovens.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Well, we ended up ****ing 2nd again. It turns out the key game was against the team that came first about 5 weeks ago. We should have beaten them as they are significantly weaker as a batting side, with some obvious weaknesses throughout their top order but, as FTP likes to do at times, it threw us a massive hope of rolling them by letting us castle the only expert/expert bat in their top order 1st ball of their innings, and then ****ed us over by allowing a cap/reasonable and rel/capable bat to hold off our whole attack for the next 22 overs. There was the predictable flow of wickets at the end of the innings, but they got way more than they should have.

Then we bat and are cruising at 1/60-odd, needing just over 100 in the last 20 overs when, after the drinks break, we then stopped being able to get it off the square and our whole top order collapsed to see us lose by 30.

It was pretty ****ing annoying, but I can't really complain. A guy who rates about 15k below two or three other teams in our division has beaten the odds to come first. We were close to doing this 5-6 seasons ago, but fell at the last game. It's pretty impressive with an average line-up to go all the way.

 

[NZTailender]

Which country are you in? that's some pretty stellar youth results

I'm in NZ 2.2 for One Day, and we're currently 6th, one win ahead of 7th who are playing 8th today. I'm, playing the team that's 4th. If we lose we'll potentially be relegated.

No chance the 7th placed team will lose - the 8th ranked team hasn't won a match and I'm pretty sure has been throwing games all season because they have decent rated players, who never seem to actually play. My NRR is better than 7th, but in their match they're abssolutely walloping them, batting first. It could go down to the wire.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Which country are you in? that's some pretty stellar youth results

I'm in NZ 2.2 for One Day, and we're currently 6th, one win ahead of 7th who are playing 8th today. I'm, playing the team that's 4th. If we lose we'll potentially be relegated.

No chance the 7th placed team will lose - the 8th ranked team hasn't won a match and I'm pretty sure has been throwing games all season because they have decent rated players, who never seem to actually play. My NRR is better than 7th, but in their match they're abssolutely walloping them, batting first. It could go down to the wire.

I'm in Australia 1.1 for Youth. My Senior team is hopeless though. Well, not completely hopeless, but we just got relegated from 3.something. We should be more competitive in 4.whatever, but most of my players are under 23. I basically cycle out anyone who gets above 10k in wages and cycle in a youth player to keep Senior wages down so I can put more money into the Yoof. With the changes coming next season though, I had to get rid of some real duds and make sure it was just players from my youth team + a super dud as 12th man that doesn't get paid much. The combining of the academies is going to be interesting. We don't drop back too much as I have still been investing a little into the Senior academies, but I want to be able to invest the cash into getting the combined academy back up to where the Youth academy is ASAP. I think I only drop down one level overall, so hopefully it's manageable. I also need 1 or 2 replacement youth bats, so cash will be tight.

My youth reserves make up our Youth Twenty-20 team (Div 3), and the same players also do the Senior Twenty-20 (Div.5) to get some experience into them. Even then, we have to deliberately lose some games to settle nicely into 2nd place. I spent the last 5 games of this season with a reversed batting order and the batsmen bowling, and we still had centuries being made and wickets being taken. They were all bots we were playing though.

 

[NZTailender]

Which country are you in? that's some pretty stellar youth results

I'm in NZ 2.2 for One Day, and we're currently 6th, one win ahead of 7th who are playing 8th today. I'm, playing the team that's 4th. If we lose we'll potentially be relegated.

No chance the 7th placed team will lose - the 8th ranked team hasn't won a match and I'm pretty sure has been throwing games all season because they have decent rated players, who never seem to actually play. My NRR is better than 7th, but in their match they're abssolutely walloping them, batting first. It could go down to the wire.

Ended up winning by one wicket. A few interesting matches in our group!

 

[Son Of Coco]

The new changes coming into effect have made things very interesting. I decided to use most of the cash I got at the end of last season for coming 2nd in both Youth comps plus Senior Twenty 20 to get my academy straight back to 'lavish'. I only dropped back one level overall from where my Youth academy was at, so it wasn't too costly. It still took up most of my cash though. Fortunately the Youth pull gods (no...not Catholic priests) have been kind to me this season and I have pulled two recruits who both look like being decent keeper options when they are 19/20. This allowed me to sell one off for around $160k to get some money back in the bank before the season started. They were neck-a-neck in terms of skills, with one having the 'safe hands' bonus and the other 'batting'. In the end, I kept the one with the cooler name (batting skill), and we now have 16 year old Stretch Heinz as our future keeping hope.

After this week's finance update, I have a cool $270 in the bank, and we are playing all our games away this week. We're at home all week next week before the home/away schedule settles in in a more balanced manner, so hopefully we somehow manage to get enough cash in reserve to replace some batsmen in Weeks 3/6.

 

[Son Of Coco]

The last 2 times I've played this ****, I've outrated him across the board and got done easily. Its ****ing annoying. I can roll a team rated 148k, but can't get it off the square against this guy.

 

[NZTailender]

The last 2 times I've played this ****, I've outrated him across the board and got done easily. Its ****ing annoying. I can roll a team rated 148k, but can't get it off the square against this guy.

View attachment 32738

When this happens to me it's often because I'll be playing the team at home and they've nailed their selection for the conditions as well as their orders

 

[Son Of Coco]

When this happens to me it's often because I'll be playing the team at home and they've nailed their selection for the conditions as well as their orders

Yeah, it was at home both times, so he must absolutely nail his orders. The games were practically identical down to how much we lost by. Whatever he does, as the game goes on, we can't score a run. Last time we were 1 down for about 85, chasing 185 and had 25 overs to go. We ended up slowing up so much we probably weren't going to get there anyway, but I still expected expert/expert bats to give reliable/capable bowlers a bit of a touch up. Even they ground us into the dirt.

I bounced back and won by 35 this week, but it still shits me. I've only lost 1 game and he's only won 1, so whatever he does only works on me.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Actually, I can find out exactly what he does bowling-wise by looking at his orders...so it's not too hard.

His batting has me ****ed though. I could see his skill ratings up until the end of last season as I was one of the under 20 managers for Australia. He has a very weak line-up for Youth 1.1, but for some reason it's hard to run through them. We did get them for 140-odd this time, but still got rissoled.

 

[Son Of Coco]

It's going to get interesting from the mid-point of this season too. Did anyone else upgrade their academies back to where they were before the changes? I have as it was only one step up, but and expensive one, so with another 4 or so players to leave before the end of this season, and no cash yet to buy anyone, I have to decide if I just do the best with what I have, and hope I sell some players to make money, or step back down to the previous level to release some funds.

 

[Son Of Coco]

The struggle has started for this season. We managed to strike it lucky and get the bottom team to play the week we lost a key player due to the turning 21. We lost this week though and even though we are 3rd, we're only two wins out of the relegation zone and losing another player next week. Also only 1 win out of first, so it's been a close season. As I thought, the loss to the bloke I outrated by about 15k looks like it might come back to bite me on the arse. I lost to him again last week. We lose by 30-odd each time, both home and away. We have outrated him by between 5k and 20k on the last 3 occasions this has happened. Will need a change of tactics in future.

All of this will be water under the bridge however if I somehow manage to get one of my players renamed 'Ebullient Pfister'.