by The Professor » Fri Dec 28, 2018 4:26 pm
Gentlemen, we are back and have a clean sweep until we get full teams.
We left off with Red Devil to make his first pick - he has selected Glenn Maxwell
To the surprise of many - and the delight of Sussexpob - it has taken until Round Eight for anyone to select Indian captain Virat Kohli.
Unfortunately for Alviro - he is not able to get his first choice pick, Glenn Maxwell - so we have to go to his second place choice - fellow Aussie Callum Ferguson.
Red Devil Junior then gets his say in proceedings and selects man of the moment Duanne Olivier .
Penultimately comes The Professor who also selected (an unusually popular) Glenn Maxwell . Second choice for him was Shreyas Iyer.
Rounding off the first sweep of players is MIB. Coming at the back of the pile, he misses out on Choice 1 - Ben Stokes - but secures his second choice, fellow Englishman - Ben Stokes.
At the end of the first round the teams are as follows:
Andy
Jeetan Patel
DFM
Simon Harmer
Mohammad Abbas
Andy
Shai Hope
DC
Ben Stokes
GG-AS
Rashid Khan
Jack Leach
RedDevil
Glenn Maxwell
Sussexpob
Virat Kholi
Alviro
Callum Ferguson
Duanne Olivier
The Professor
Shreyas Iyer
MIB
Jonny Bairstow
So now we work our way backwards:
MIB adds big hitting Indian stalwart Rohit Sharma to his duo of middle order batsmen.
On to The Professor who gets his third choice player - Australia's forgotten man, Joe Burns.
RDJ comes from so far out of the left field he can barely be seen through his selection of Abdur Razzaq as the second Pakistan player in our list this year.
Alviro adds Wayne Parnell to his team and is guaranteed points from the County Championship this year.
Sussexpob adds another international Test captain to his team through the selection of Kane Williamson.
As we head towards the middle of the table, Red Devil chooses Morne Morkel to round off a very M-based team.
Dr Cricket has had something of a bad time of it in the draft this year. After getting his first choice in the first draft, his second, third and fourth choice selections (Kohli, Williamson and Root) have all been earmarked by this point. We have had to go with his 5th choice selection - Shubman Gill.
Arthur creates a very Brexit-friendly team by selecting this year's fifth best player Jos Buttler who joins the England captain in the bottom placed team from 2018.
Andy manages to swoop in for another discarded player from 2018 and claims Bangladesh's Shakib Al Hasan.
This then leaves Ian with the last word who manages to get his second pick (against the odds) with India's Kuldeep Yadav rounding off our draft.
Gentlemen I present to you our 2019 teams.
Ian
Jeetan Patel
Kuldeep Yadav
DFM
Mohammad Abbas
Simon Harmer
Andy
Shakib Al Hasan
Shai Hope
Arthur
Jos Buttler
Joe Root
Dr Cricket
Shubman Gill
Ben Stokes
GG-AS
Rashid Khan
Jack Leach
Red Devil
Glenn Maxwell
Morne Morkel
SussexPob
Virat Kohli
Kane Williamson
Alviro
Callum Ferguson
Wayne Parnell
RDJ
Duanne Olivier
Abdur Razzaq
The Professor
Shreyas Iyer
Joe Burns
MIB
Jonny Bairstow
Rohit Sharma
"It has been said of the unseen army of the dead, on their everlasting march, that when they are passing a rural cricket ground the Englishman falls out of the ranks for a moment to look over the gate and smile."