by sussexpob » Tue Mar 13, 2018 12:21 am
The scouting system was overhauled last year, when they hired some former headteacher with no experience in cricket that I know of to redesign the system. I believe that he wants to model the whole system on an NFL team, or certainly that has been reported (as early as today in the Telegraph, amongst other comments previously). Even Athers in the Times said the ECB had been working with Cleveland Browns to gain insight into how it works. To me, that is incredibly laughable. Modelling your scouting system on a sport that is about as accurate in its predictions as the average lottery ticket buyer is worrying. It increases when, and I do not in anyway overstate this, the Cleveland Browns are notorious in the NFL for being a draft busting disaster. Its essentially the equivalent of asking Nick Leeson his opinion on lists of low yield, ultra safe stock market picks.
One only has to look at the NFL to see how scouting in the sport is not very good. Take for instance the QBs to go to the hall of fame since 2000. Favre was drafted near dead last, seen as a no hoper and a bad learner, and was released by the Falcons after playing about 8 seconds of actual football inside his first few games. Warren Moon went undrafted completely, and had to come through Canadian football (the equivalent of being 25 and being bought in English football from the Rymans league after you turn up as a no hoper and score 120 goals in a season). Kurt Warner didnt have his NFL debut till 28, having already been undrafted and went to the Canadian minor league. He was stacking shelves at minimum wage while playing for years. Those still playing who are shoe in for the HOF after retirement, Brady was another no hope who barely made the draft and only got a game because the QB was crippled and the other back ups were injured. Brees went 3rd round and was seen as barely good enough to play at that level. Rodgers was off the charts on all measures but dropped down 24 places to a number of inferior players. The list of top "wonderlic" scouting scores is a wasteland of players who never made it, with the odd one there who cut it.
To put that in laymans terms, its would be like saying in a list of Ronaldo, Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, De Bruyne, Aguero and Maradona, the scouts thought over half of these players were not even good enough to be considered within the top 150-200 players of the same age in the world. Its ok to fob that off, but when you think about the fact that these are ignorant judgement either. You can access any given scouting report, they are massively extensive, they measure everything, and are done for every single player entering the NFL draft. So it is literally a case of widespread failure in the scouting systems to identify them, because not only does every team make a judgement, there are 1000s of scouts producing independent judges.
Sounds like a really good system to mimic
2010 French Open fantasy league guru 2010 Wimbledon fantasy league guru 2014 Masters golf fantasy guru 2015 Players Championship FL Guru 2016 Masters Golf Fantasy Guru
And a hat and bra to you too, my good sirs!