Is it a toxic team culture? The old guys are not performing enough?
I think I've just built a bad outfit. EurAfrica is cut throat. My side is more seam-heavy, but we get outplayed by other teams who prefer similar conditions, and then we also go and struggle on spinning wickets because all we have is Tim Chester.
Having said that, we've also lost 1 and tied 1 SOD league game this season that we really should have won, just ****ed up from winning positions. So luck is not going our way.
The Moooo game wasn't the first time this season we failed to defend a reasonable score against relatively weaker batting. It's happened to us in the SOD too. Danial Ahsan is a step down from Arif Jalal as a captain, so that's an issue, and we only have Ghani (13) and Chester (15) in the starting XI who have accuracies above 12! So I suspect we are not building enough pressure to defend scores. In fact 3/5 of my most accurate bowlers atm are in the Dev team lol. Rockall and Ashraf are two of those and have actually gone okay when I give them chances at senior cricket.
Also apart from Shahbaz, none of my batters have good stamina. So we're not getting anyone scoring tons. Heshan has 13 stam but is 29 year old keeper-bat. I can't put him in the Top 3 cuz it will wreck his fitness. This means lots of batters getting set and getting out.
We also do not bat deep. When I try to pick 3 bowlers + Ghani at 8, we bat deep, but then I need 10 overs of Ahsan and Younis which has not worked, especially defending scores. When I pick 4 bowlers then Ghani gets nosebleeds at 7 and our tail gets skittled - Bashir at 8 is a 27 skill batter, 8-10-9. Just not good enough.
Our experience levels as a team are kinda meh. 3 guys with 20 exp, Danial Ahsan with 19, Sampath 16, Samra 15, rest 13 or lower. I've got 7 guys who are between 21 and 24, and then Samra is 25. So in theory this group should get better with time. But the balance is all out of whack, and the skill distributions are not great.
It's tough to fix all this in incremental ways. I'm very tempted to just start selling off the pieces, build a bank balance, and look to invest in building a new better team. But with the way the TM is I feel that's not a wise move either! So all I can do is try to get the best out of this unit, hopefully save some money and avoid relegation, hope for some good YPs and keep an eye out on the TM for role players.
My Dev XI looks better, but are too raw. I've got a 13-19-12 opener with 19 stam, so he'll be great when he's ready, a 15-20-7 seamer with 20 stam who can plug up an end with the new ball, also has 12-3-17 slogging ability and 16 fielding. Naeem and Rockall, as mentioned, are high Acc bowlers who can already step up to senior cricket. So hopefully the future is a bit brighter. Just about survival now.
FHK are thriving tho. 2nd in SOD Div 2, 1st in T20 Div 1. Avoiding relegation in Dev so far. Will be a shame when this golden generation ages out.
EDIT: Wrote this rant before checking yesterday's result and seeing that we successfully chased down 345 with tons for Raun and Heshan
Points are still valid IMO