The insipid taste left by the Multan Sultans' Spillover
My take on the insipid spillover being framed as revolutionary
When I first began writing this, I had recently read an essay by American venture capitalist Paul Graham titled “Taste for Makers”, and listened to a podcast episode of Australian keynote speaker Vinh Giang’s “Vinh and Ali Show” titled “The Creative Act”.
When I woke up on the day of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) 9 draft and went on my phone to go through each team’s picks, the first thing that came to mind seeing the Multan Sultans’ squad was the word “insipid.”
This specific opinion was likely heavily influenced by the aforementioned pieces of content, as it hadn’t been too long since I consumed them, had many memorable tidbits to take away from it still fresh in my mind, and the fact that the overarching theme tied back to one’s sense of taste.
My mind was fixated on this word about the Sultans’ squad. I couldn’t think of anything else, as though this perfectly encapsulated their quality, hook, line, and sinker.
It was akin to that lightbulb moment we often have when an idea clicks in our mind, with some of the sparks that follow consuming you as American writer David Perell talks about on an episode of his “How I Write” podcast.
“This need to share, this need to express, this need to teach, and if I can’t do that, I just feel dead, I just want to die if I can’t have that expression. That idea is living inside of me, and it has to get out. It’s like my mission.”
For me, describing it as a mission is an instilled version of a raison d'être.
I was watching 91 Days when I began writing this, and in the first episode, a dialogue the protagonist Angelo Lagusa says stuck with me and resonates in this context: “A man needs a raison d'être.”
I find myself in the predicament Perell describes currently, so here I am writing why personally, the Multan Sultans left an insipid taste, for this is currently my raison d'être.
It may come across as one of those born-hater memes, and you’re probably not wrong.
I suppose anyone who spends 4 consecutive days extensively writing on such a topic with 7 editing sessions to follow a bit over a month later screams having a hate boner for it, with the raison d'être deemed a convenient coverup.
So one certainly cannot be blamed for reaching this conclusion, though I will say that one has to be built different to lead such a crusade, and that’s why I took a potato chip and ate it while writing this article.
I should also mention that following the PSL draft’s conclusion, many ideas flowed into my mind to describe why I cannot look at the Sultans squad from any lens but an insipid one.
So I must share, express, and teach it, for if I cannot get this idea out of me, it’d be more tragic than when Mohammad Nawaz bowled the final over twice against India in 2022.
They were too edgy from the very beginning. The buildup to this season’s draft was like no other, with several trades taking place, be it because the player wanted to leave his previous franchise, or teams trying to make room for themselves owing to the byzantine retention rules I to this day still haven’t bothered to try and understand and/or cash in the benefits of high profile trades for better draft picks.
The Sultans happened to fall into both categories and were way too edgy with their approach. They say too much of anything is bad for you, and it certainly applies in this case.
And there was no limit to their edginess.
It spilled over from the trade window all the way to the draft.
Owner Ali Tareen revealed on the Relu Kattay podcast that both Rilee Rossouw and Shan Masood wanted to leave the franchises, with Rossouw’s agent revealing that he wanted a fresh, new challenge (ideally one with his previous franchise Quetta Gladiators at that too), while the Shan was all but set to be retained until the Karachi Kings rang him up with a captaincy offer.
Like Tareen, I’d feel sad about letting go of a PSL GOAT in Rossouw, but as the principles of stoicism would say, the circumstances aren’t in your control.
In this case, it was especially important that the Sultans mastered this Hellenistic philosophy, as to make things more complicated, it is said that Naseem Shah wanted to go to Islamabad United.
Most PSL fans would already be familiar with Naseem wanting to leave the Gladiators since last season (presumably because he reached his breaking point of being yelled at behind the wicket by someone whose decibels read higher than his contributions since winning the trophy in 2019), but this latest development was unexpected.
Asking for Mohammad Hasnain instead comes to mind, who possesses great control with the new ball, but that’s very unrealistic, for there’s no way the Gladiators would be willing to let go of both him and Naseem in the same season, as though Pakistan is known for its conveyor belt of producing 140 KPH+ tearaway quicks, not every single unit produced that comes off the factory is high caliber.
However, there’s always a last resort, for desperate times call for desperate measures as they say, especially when you’re trading away a player because they want to leave, and this is where stoicism comes into play.
But settling for just Iftikhar Ahmed is no last resort; it’s not a trade branching off of stoicism either.
It’s plain stupidity.
He’s a local finisher with a middling record across 8 seasons. The only solid season came in 2021, which wasn’t even that special if you looked deep under the lens.
His middling record in the middle overs owing to his profound limitations against spin deflates his overall numbers that season.
I’m not trying to disrespect Iftikhar. Despite his deficiencies and the fact he’s a slow starter, he’s quite decent as a pace hitter at the death if he’s well settled by then, as seen against Afghanistan in this year’s ODI World Cup.
It’s just that there are more conditions to be met than for Pakistan to make it past the group stage in ICC events after the inevitable time comes for fans to pull out their calculators, such as shielding him against spin in the middle overs like a newborn baby.
Otherwise, you’ll end up seeing him dot it up against spin, as I had the misfortune to in the one match I chose to stay up and pull an all-nighter for in the 2022 T20 World Cup final, increasing your odds of losing the match by misusing your resources, as was the case here.
I wanted to pull my hair out after he played out a maiden against Adil Rashid since it was well past midnight and I chose to sacrifice a good night’s sleep for this; I imagine this to be the first reaction of most Sultans fans when they came to know of this trade, as it’s that baffling.
The IftiMania tagline of Iftikhar has been quite popular for a while now, but really, it’d be more apt for Rossouw.
It’s like this season’s hottest TV shows: the biggest one is likely to be largely hyped by certain fandoms just because so and so happens to be starring in the lead role, and that’s often all you need to know to gauge the show’s quality with decent accuracy.
In contrast, the show that you know should be getting more hype doesn’t have the luxury of star power a lot of the time.
That’s what this is.
IftiMania has been blown out of proportion by his fandom, while unfortunately for Rossouw, though he’s the superior T20 player of the two by a substantial margin, Rossouwians aren’t a thing.
It’s not like he experienced a decline in his PSL performances either.
Far from it.
Rossouw has the highest strike rate of the 12 batters who regularly bat in the same two positions he does in this sample, with the third-best average to boot.
This period also coincides with a stint he had for Somerset in the 2022 T20 Blast where he broke all sorts of records to help them qualify for Finals Day, paving the much-awaited return to his throne in the Protea T20I side after the abolishment of Kolpak, as well as an Indian Premier League (IPL) contract for the first time in 8 seasons.
I’m probably fortunate that I began editing this article well after writing the initial draft, for an “aha!” moment may have been posed by his SA20 performances this season for the Pretoria Capitals in the eyes of some to unsheathe their unpopular opinion swords and back me up in a corner had this been published during the tournament.
But unfortunately for them, despite Rossouw unarguably being why Pretoria failed to qualify for the playoffs, this trade still leaves an insipid taste in my mouth even taking into account the hot, sticky dilemma the Sultans found themselves in, so I’d smirk and cross my arms at the sight of the swords just like the meme.
I don’t believe the Sultans are now magically “ahead of the curve” per se, and I’m willing to die on that hill.
4 of his 9 dismissals came in the powerplay, and in the article hyperlinked four paragraphs ago, I write about how vulnerable he is against new ball movement, so this wasn’t anything new.
So most of his dismissals coming in this phase owing to how unprolific the Phil Salt-Will Jacks opening duo was in contrast to last season despite batting at #4 the entire season wasn’t surprising.
I came to learn of what is another major weakness in Rossouw’s game this season: slow and low surfaces.
In Pretoria’s reverse fixture against the Durban Super Giants, he was unable to pick Noor Ahmad.
No one was able to the entire tournament, so he can be excused to a certain extent for that.
But that was only 8 of the 27 deliveries he faced, in which he still mustered a meager 10 runs, not even hitting a single boundary.
Pretoria went on to lose by just 8 runs, eventually spilling over into a group stage elimination.
But this outcome most likely would not have seen the light of day had Rossouw not struggled so much and eaten up so many deliveries.
It was a completely atypical knock from Rossouw that day, one that left me stunned and speechless like Adam Gilchrist commentating on that freak dismissal of Glenn Maxwell live.
It was also the first time I saw Rossouw struggle this much, and I imagine it was the case for many other viewers as well.
But none of this changes the fact that it still was an edgy, insipid trade by the Sultans, despite the circumstances.
Amidst all of this is his lone fifty this season right under our nose, which came in conditions that are like home to him even when he’s not in South Africa, contrary to Doherty from Wizard of Oz’s “There’s No Place Like Home” iconic dialogue.
Though it was a home game at Centurion, for Rilee Rossouw the batter, there’s no place like home when it’s a flat track anywhere in the world.
And I don’t mean this in a derogatory manner.
Chasing 211 against the Paarl Royals, Rossouw top scored with 82 runs off 45 deliveries, striking at 182.22 with 10 fours and 4 sixes to his name, but he couldn’t see it all the way through, and Pretoria went on to lose by 10 runs (it’s also pertinent to mention that this was Rossouw’s highest individual score in the league).
Every batter typically thrives the most when it is a belter of a surface with the ball coming well onto the bat with equal pace and bounce, and Centurion is one of those venues, reflected by the average first innings score reading as 166 this SA20, and the graphic below.
And Rossouw is elite at such grounds; he’s one of a kind, ticking off a major T20 box given how homogeneous pitches tend to be favoring boundary-hitting.
The breakdown by venue of what has been a very dormant SA20 career for him thus far further backs this claim too, with two of his 50+ scores coming at venues with good pace and bounce on offer.
He smashed the then-fastest ton off 43 balls in PSL history against his now once again current franchise Gladiators in PSL5 at Multan, which is akin to Centurion with the extra bounce bowlers can extract off the surface.
He’s the leading run-scorer at the venue as well in the PSL, scoring 375 runs across 7 matches averaging 93.75 striking at 169.68, where the Gladiators will be playing one match against the Sultans.
And on the topic of Rawalpindi, he broke the record there last season, bettering it by 3 balls against Peshawar Zalmi, sealing playoff qualifications for the Sultans before his then-teammate Usman Khan made the record his own the following match, where the Gladiators will be playing three matches this season.
My point is that despite the trade’s circumstances, they went against the laws of alchemy in sweetening the pot too much for Gladiators, rather than settling for an equal-value trade that was still possible.
“But what would that look like as a last resort?”
It’s simple really.
Tareen described this upcoming PSL season as a rebuilding phase on the Relu Kattay podcast, with one dynasty ended, and now embarking on a journey to build the next one.
If I were at the helm of this ship, I would’ve set my sights on the treasures of Jason Roy, Will Smeed, and Omair bin Yousuf respectively in exchange for Rossouw.
If need be, I would have offered Roy a Platinum contract, and given that one of the 3 slots in the Platinum roster has to be filled by a foreign player anyway, it’d be like killing two birds with one stone; a win-win situation for me.
And though Roy blew cold in the recent SA20 playing for Paarl, one cannot ignore that he has been one of the best PSL openers since 2022.
Out of 18 openers who faced at least 120 balls during this period, Roy has the third-best average at 45.45, with the same going for his strike rate of 169.49, which is why the offer would be well warranted.
The streets won’t forget how he singlehandedly took down one of the world’s best bowling attacks across T20 leagues in the Lahore Qalandars’ either during the 2022 season, chasing down a target of 205 with 3 balls to spare by smashing a 57-ball 116 striking at 203.50, with 11 fours and 8 sixes to his name.
But amidst all the rumored negotiations and ploys they had in mind that ultimately fell through, Sultans Street certainly forgot, settling for whatever offer they got like a Pawn Stars customer desperate for quick cash.
I suppose we could chalk it up to the Yerkes-Dodson law, in that their performance capacity was impaired owing to higher-than-normal arousal levels they experienced given the circumstances, which is very unfortunate considering he would’ve been a great complement to Mohammad Rizwan, who would have covered up his inability to attack most types of spin.
Though Smeed is someone who has flown off the radar since his landmark PSL7 season where he was just three runs shy from becoming the first batter to score a century on PSL debut against Zalmi, he is a talent I rate very highly, and this piece by Harigovind Sankar eloquently encapsulates why.
During the same aforementioned period, Smeed averaged 34 odd striking at 135.32, which are decent numbers for a 22-year-old.
He had that very forgettable match at Rawalpindi against Zalmi ironically where though literally every batter was hitting it out of the park for fun during that leg, he struggled throughout the 22 balls he faced, scoring just 26 runs.
Roy was able to save the day once again with 10 balls remaining, though from Smeed’s perspective, I think it was a great learning curve for him.
Smeed hasn’t been able to crack consistency outside of the Blast yet, with his last innings of note being a 63 off 36 deliveries against the Barbados Royals in last year’s Caribbean Premier League (CPL), but he could have been an excellent long-term project for the Sultans to mold as Roy’s eventual successor.
Availability would probably be no issue either anytime soon, considering he signed a landmark white ball deal with Somerset in 2022, retiring from First Class cricket at just 21 then, and has to date played only 1 List A match.
As Harigovind mentions in the article, teams are beginning to scout for maximizing home advantage, so “the utility of players like Smeed could come in a very restrictive, claustrophobic sense: on grounds where the square boundaries are longer and on pitches that do not favor spin.”, with shorter batters like Smeed becoming rarer with T20 cricket experiencing a change in tastes and preferences in developing a fetish for taller batters with naturally long levers.
And it just so happens that Multan has both longer square boundaries and pitches that don’t favor spin.
However, one may question how much overall success the Sultans would yield this season with such a trade, to which I say that if you explicitly recognize it as a rebuilding phase, immediate success should be the last thing that comes to mind; they shouldn’t be at all.
It is also why Omair would have been a good trade-in from this perspective as well.
He was the fourth-highest run scorer in this season’s National T20 Cup (NT20), scoring 401 runs averaging 36.45 striking at 128.11 across 13 matches for champions Karachi Whites.
The strike rate doesn’t reflect it, but from the matches I was able to watch where he played, I observed an improvement in intent, leading to him playing more high-risk shots at a higher frequency, including unorthodox shots like the sweep.
He is also well-regarded as a technically sound batter in the first-class circuit, though he is prone to spin chokes, especially against slow-left arm bowlers (SLA).
However, he has still emerged as a decent middle-order option for Pakistan’s T20I team in the future at 25, and I can guarantee you that he would have been a better option than spin-hitting floater Tayyab Tahir.
And considering who they have ended up with as their other batting options, it makes all the more sense.
Potential treasure well worth its weight in gold in the future was there for the taking, ones that pirates would happily view as booty and load their ship up with even if it eventually turned out to be phony, or in cricketing jargon, frauds.
It could’ve expedited their rebuilding process, but because we’re edgy, we chose to look the other way and happily settle for Iftikhar.
It is because of the prospective long-term value in this last resort trade that I view it as equal value, one that wouldn’t have cost my right arm like Edward Elric.
Though the Sultans don’t have to worry about the laws of alchemy regardless, the question begs itself once again: Why? What led you to be this edgy?
“To get the first pick of the draft of course!”
And the irony is that it’s completely valid actually.
Had the quality of the overseas players been at that standard that is.
With respect to these players, of course, I’d personally be willing to shell out top dollar for only 15 of them, who are as follows:
Akeal Hosein
Alzarri Joseph
Brandon King
Fazalhaq Farooqi
Kieron Pollard
Kusal Mendis
Kyle Mayers
Maheesh Theekshana
Mujeeb-ur-Rehman
Noor Ahmad
Reece Topley
Romario Shepherd
Sam Billings
Sherfane Rutherford
Rassie van der Dussen
The standard of overseas players not at the level fans are accustomed to post-pandemic has greatly affected the perception of the league.
The PSL now finds themselves competing with the South Africa T20 (SA20) and International League T20 (ILT20), with both leagues willing to pay well above the top $130,000-$170,000 USD Platinum bracket.
To be exact, both the ILT20 and SA20’s top salary bracket is $500,000. While the ILT20 relies entirely on direct signings to procure foreign players, SA20 teams were allowed to pre-sign 5 players before the league’s inaugural auction, a practice that continued this season.
No one has yet been able to compete with the financial might of top Indian businessmen and the Glazers of course, so you can’t expect the PSL owners to.
Pakistan’s economy in a crippling state certainly doesn’t help either, but it’s not entirely impossible for a governing body that is now the biggest non-Big 3 board to move its King on the chessboard in taking back their title as home to the world’s second-best T20 league, it’s just that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has merely chosen to not act on it in my opinion.
Direct signings and increased salary brackets come to mind for most people in solving this problem, with the former clearly something the Sultans would love to do.
They used their traded-in first Platinum pick on David Willey, sparking massive outrage on Pakistan Cricket Twitter, largely along the lines of the league’s quality being reduced so much that the first pick of the draft is someone who is a medium pace trundler whereas Pakistan’s pace factory conveyor belts are known to produce bowlers who can bowl quicker than him in their sleep.
Contrary to public opinion, this pick didn’t leave an insipid taste for me.
I believe he’s a solid powerplay bowler who can give you three tight overs upfront most of the time when the ball is swinging, and the numbers speak for themselves.
Willey’s 41 wickets are behind just Luke Wood and is one of 15 bowlers who have a bowling average of under 24 in this sample, with an economy rate of 7.16 to boot.
And this won’t be his first time at the PSL either.
He played two seasons ago for the Sultans and was one of the best new ball bowlers that season.
His wicket tally of 6 was behind only Shaheen Shah Afridi and Asif Afridi respectively, was one of 9 bowlers whose bowling average was under 24 during this phase, though he was a bit on the expensive side with an economy rate of 8.36.
He’s someone who in my view should be bowled out within the first 10 overs, as I don’t think he provides much value outside of the powerplay.
However, he also does provide extra depth down the order to complement his new ball prowess, and can even be promoted to open if need be for whatever reason.
Given how edgy the Sultans have been, I wouldn’t completely rule this out either considering they promoted Usama Mir to one down against the Lahore Qalandars last season, in an attempt to extend their batting lineup I’d presume.
But we shouldn’t even be discussing this in the first place; they should’ve sailed the seven seas and procured the treasures of Roy, Smeed, and Omair respectively!
And though Willey didn’t leave an insipid taste, I don’t think he should’ve been the Sultans’ platinum pick.
Instead, it should’ve been Kyle Mayers.
Many people on Twitter were expecting him to be the first pick (I was as well), and just like them, I was surprised to see this wasn’t the case.
55.41% of the PSL powerplay overs the past two seasons have been bowled by right-arm pace, a bowling type Rizwan struggles to attack, whereas Mayers thrives against them as the intent chart below highlights.
Mayers’ ability to dominate right-arm pace comes down to his strong offside game, while though Rizwan has worked on it since it first came to limelight during the 2022 Asia Cup, he is still a legside-dominated batter.
With Shan traded away, Mayers was the ideal option to pair Rizwan with at the top, as akin to the Roy trade I proposed earlier, he would’ve now been complemented with an aggressor at the other end that could compensate on his behalf for his typical slow starts in the powerplay like a Regigigas, and on top of that, he could’ve also provided one or two overs upfront with the banana swing he gets into the right-hander.
But most importantly, we viewers could’ve had the chance to see some very exquisite strokeplay while Mayers elegantly held the pose, with official and fan-made compilations galore.
But alas, it wasn’t to be.
Not just for the Sultans, but for any other team, which was even more surprising considering there’s no international series scheduled involving the West Indies during the PSL’s window.
Instead, they chose to use one of their six overseas slots on Usman Khan, who last season was a local as now he aspires to represent the United Arab Emirates (UAE) owing to a lack of opportunities at the domestic level as he put it.
But despite now being eligible, he’s yet to make his international debut for them, even in the series against Afghanistan a bit over a month ago where the UAE were handing out caps for fun.
He had an interesting start to his PSL career when Quetta Gladiators first drafted him as a Supplementary player in 2021 and looked like he’d become the first player to score a ton on PSL debut, coincidentally against the Sultans.
And as is the case for many players who end up bashing a particular team in a league, the Sultans drafted him in Silver two seasons later and was arguably the biggest beneficiary of last season’s Rawalpindi leg with that 36-ball ton against the Gladiators as fate would have it.
But apart from Usman making full use of the flattest track complemented by the shortest boundaries in the country, there wasn’t anything else of note from him.
He went on to get a contract in the Global T20 Canada (GT20) with the Brampton Wolves, and despite the league being a far lower standard than the PSL, he scored 121 runs across 7 matches averaging 17.28 striking at 115.23 with a top score of 33.
A quick glance at the match summaries on ESPNCricinfo suggests that with not even one score above 170, Brampton may have had way more in it for the bowlers unlike Rawalpindi even if the boundaries were short.
He had no innings of note in the Abu Dhabi T10 either for the Delhi Bulls (a format I don’t take seriously at all anyway) and has been far from impressive in the ongoing ILT20 for the Gulf Giants (coached by Sultans’ former head coach, Andy Flower).
And yet the Sultans still took a punt on him over Mayers.
But even if Sultans were looking for an attacking backup overseas opener in Silver, Usman wasn’t the only option.
There was Lasith Croospulle, a hidden gem in the Silver category who was not only the standout emerging player of last year’s Lanka Premier League (LPL) but is also probable for Sri Lanka’s 2024 T20 World Cup squad in my opinion.
On Sri Lankan pitches traditionally known to be on the sluggish side, Croospulle struck at 141.67, the third highest in this sample, the same being the case for his average of 51.
He was the highest run-scorer for his team, the Galle Titans, and the sixth highest overall, scoring 232 runs across 8 matches averaging 33.14 striking at 139.75, playing a major role in their top 4 qualification.
In “The Story of Sultans Draft,” as Tareen is going to the draft venue, he talks to analyst Nathan Leamon about how he’s expecting at least two left-field picks in the draft.
And this for me was one of them, and not in a good way.
It’s not like he’s a young promising prospect who’s just blown cold either. He’s 28 and doesn’t have many performances on trickier surfaces, situations, and against higher quality attacks on his CV.
Recency bias is very much a thing not just in cricket but across all sports, as well as what I’ve coined, the “one-knock wonder bias.”
Usman falls in the latter category.
Fellow opener Martin Guptill shot up to 9th in the runs tally the same season courtesy of the Karachi Kings, as he failed to replicate even a fraction of his macho against all other teams.
Thanks to Karachi, he got a gig with the Trinbago Knight Riders in the CPL and scored a century against the Barbados Royals.
But his overall CPL season was just like the above graph.
Given the recent history of the Gladiators’ management, you’d expect them to be honey-trapped by such selective optics and retain him.
But to my and probably everyone else’s surprise, not only was he released, but no other team went for him in Diamond (though he still has the PSL and Rawalpindi to thank for extending his T20 freelancer career by at least 2 years after turning down a central contract with New Zealand last November).
Guptill will go down as a fairly respectable white ball player for the Kiwis when he calls the curtains on his career, so he also had the luxury of reputational bias, probably the biggest one after recency bias; just look at how many big names the Lahore Qalandars stacked up on in 2016, as well as the Rising Pune Supergiants (RPS) in the IPL the same year for instance.
But this seems the polar opposite.
Usman had neither reputational nor recency bias going for him, merely the one-knock wonder bias was somehow enough for the Sultans to be seduced into picking him again.
But the irony is that in “The Story of Sultans Draft,” the rationale for picking all overseas players but him was covered!
So it makes you wonder (though Tareen tweeted that he’s the backup wicketkeeping option, which is very bizarre considering to my knowledge he’s never kept).
Croospulle wasn’t the only hidden gem in the Silver category though of course.
If you look at it from different lenses, young gun Alick Athanaze would have been an excellent pickup as a middle-order spin hitter option, who once again, I can guarantee would be a much better spin-hitting floater than Tayyab Tahir.
Just check the footage of his 76 against the Jamaica Tallawahs in the CPL chasing 161 where he’s sweeping and reverse-sweeping one of the most economical T20 spinners in Imad Wasim for fun.
It looked like he was batting on a different surface, as all other Royals batters who batted for 10+ deliveries struggled to even maintain a strike rate of 120, whilst he casually went about his business striking at 158.33 to still chase it down with an over to spare.
Like Croospulle, I expect him to be a probable for the West Indies in their home T20 World Cup squad.
There was also Richard Ngarava, who among all Full Member bowlers not only had the joint-most wickets and best average in T20Is last year but the third joint-best economy rate among bowlers who bowled a minimum of 120 deliveries.
Ngarava is someone who I’m baffled does not already have many T20 league contracts to pick from, only getting his first one last year at the LPL with the Titans. And though he has since also gotten stints with the Sylhet Strikers in the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), as well as with the Dubai Capitals in the ILT20, this should have happened sooner.
Aged 26, fast pacers tend to decline quicker (pun intended) in contrast to batters. He’s a top-tail commodity I strongly believe franchises have missed out on big time. A case in point is a personal recollection of mine: the upset against Pakistan in the 2022 T20 World Cup.
I woke up and caught the penultimate overs of Pakistan’s infamous chase, and remember him keeping Mohammad Nawaz and Mohammad Wasim Jr quiet most of the over with his mix-ups of bouncers and yorkers.
With the new ball, he tends to find success by nailing the consistently good length.
Tareen talked about death bowling being their biggest concern going into the draft in “The Story of Sultans Draft,” and Ngarava could’ve been an answer to his prayers.
They’d also be familiar with his bowling partner from the other end, Blessing Muzarabani, as he’s represented them for two seasons with decent success, but because we’re edgy, we didn’t bother to consider him.
Ngarava, Athanaze, and Croospulle all would not only have been a great bang for the Sultans’ buck in Silver, but they’re the type of hidden gems you find fans often obsessing over all day after stumbling upon them.
And this would’ve helped increase the expected quality of the upcoming season, a sentiment I’ve found to be particularly shared by many Pakistani fans on Twitter.
But at the same time, I’m not trying to throw shade on Usman.
I believe the prospect of him opening for the UAE with Muhammad Waseem is mouthwatering, and it’s a shame they were unable to qualify for next year’s T20 World Cup to potentially witness them take down high-quality bowling attacks for fun on the belters America would likely have on offer in a bid to attract new fans.
If the entire league was being held in Rawalpindi this season, he probably would’ve been the steal of the draft in Silver even as an overseas player. I’d imagine a team using their wildcard on him in a higher category to guarantee it won’t be too late when it’s time for the Silver picks.
But the PSL isn’t being entirely held at Rawalpindi, so to use an overseas slot on him is bizarre to me. I’d have no qualms at all if he was still a local even taking into account the subsequent lack of performances, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see him perform at just Rawalpindi yet again this season.
Teams weren’t interested in stealing Usman from Sultans and trying to bait them into using their Right-to-Match (RTM) card either, and nor did even the Gladiators fall prey to the one-knock wonder bias they were at the receiving end of to employ this tactic (surprise, surprise!).
So it certainly makes you wonder.
As you can probably tell by now, the Sultans’ edginess spilled over from the trades all the way to draft day.
They didn’t bother to retain Arafat Minhas, a very promising 19-year-old left-arm finger spin allrounder who is well-poised to eventually become Mohammad Nawaz’s successor in the T20I side.
Even though his category was renewed to Silver due to the Asian Games having international status, he’s still an excellent package at Silver given what we’ve seen of him at the U19 level, like finishing as the second-highest run scorer in the Youth ODI series when Sri Lanka U19 came to tour last October.
He was one of two batters in the top 5 to strike at over a run a ball, which is a very impressive feat for age group cricket.
And just recently, he top-scored in the U19 World Cup Super Sixes clash against Bangladesh U19 with 34 runs off 40 deliveries striking at 85, hitting 4 fours and a six in the process to help arrest a massive collapse at 89/6 and help give the Pakistani bowlers something to bowl at in 155, eventually proving to be just enough.
He was also pivotal in nearly pulling off a heist for the next generation of Pakistan cricketers to not have to already bear the emotional trauma of losing to Australia in a knockout immediately afterward, once again top-scoring with 52 off 61 balls striking at 85.24 including 9 fours, before inflicting the runout of Harjas Singh defending a target of 180 and bowling a very tight spell of 2-20 across his full 10 over quota, dismissing opener Harry Dixon and allrounder Tom Campbell before going on to lose by a solitary wicket.
But the Karachi Kings will be reaping all the benefits instead, as the Sultans didn’t even bother to use their RTM card.
The Sultans’ overall bowling attack quality is very subpar in my view, and with Tareen confirming on the Relu Kattay podcast that the PCB has advised against Ihsanullah featuring this season, it’s just rubbing more salt in their wounds at this point.
It’s more than overkill.
Abbas Afridi is someone I see brightly in the light of Harshal Patel, in that he takes junk wickets by being targeted as a weak link bowler.
Just like Harshal, he has variations, with one of them ironically being akin to his signature back-of-the-hand variation that dips into the batter, which yielded him great success in the IPL2021 season.
He has shown good potential in the powerplay with the movement he generates, and can also hit a few as an allrounder (such as when he took down Haris Rauf in last season’s final and a brief flourish against New Zealand last month that helped in preventing a series whitewash at Christchurch) akin to Harshal, but the overall package isn’t all that impressive.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see him concede at a similarly high economy rate yet not take as many wickets this season.
Though Usama Mir had a resurgence last year with his Adil-esque action and can generate extra bounce with his high release point as a tall spinner complemented by decent hitting ability, it doesn’t help when you’re far from accurate and end up dragging it down, pitching it up as a half volley or a full toss often, prevalent throughout the World Cup and the New Zealand series.
There is Reece Topley however, who I view as an English Shaheen due to his height, left-arm angle, hit-the-deck value, and ability to swing the ball both ways at a good pace.
He’s a very high-quality acquisition, but the problem is that he’s unfortunately very injury-prone, and as I’m editing this article one final time, Tareen confirmed that Topley will not be coming after the England Cricket Board (ECB) revoked his No Objection Certificate (NOC) over concerns of a niggle.
Olly Stone has been signed as his replacement, and he has all the raw ingredients of a good quality express pacer in an ability to rush the batter with hard lengths, complemented by his variations he can bowl with a big pace differential as well as extract good new ball movement.
But the problem is that he hasn’t been able to get the same movement that he used to, reflected by his recent stint with the MI Cape Town in the SA20: 5 wickets across 5 matches averaging 31.80 at an economy rate of 10.04.
Cricinfo reported that they called in quality control to contain what they could of this edgy, insipid spillover by trying to rope in Nandre Burger and Dushmantha Chameera after Burger was not granted an NOC by Cricket South Africa (CSA), while Chameera injured his left quadriceps on Sunday, which meant that he’d miss the rest of the ongoing white ball series against Afghanistan.
They say the third time’s the charm, but because we’re edgy, you can tell where it’s going in this case.
Taking into account availability, Sam Cook could have been a solid pickup.
Though he was a pre-signing for Joburg this SA20, he only played two matches, the first one being the Eliminator against Paarl where he took figures of 4/24, including the wicket of England’s white-ball skipper Jos Buttler, immediately amassing a following amongst Super Kings fans on Twitter.
He has developed his white-ball skills in the past few years, such as swinging it into the right-hander, decent yorker accuracy, a back-of-the-hand variation, and an ability to extract good movement (unlike Olly currently) off the surface through which he was able to rush batters despite his speeds capping around 135 KPH due to his skiddy nature.
Cook was also the Man of the Match in the 2022 Men’s Hundred Final against Manchester Originals for scalping 4/18 to help Trent Rockets lift the trophy, overall taking 11 wickets across 6 matches averaging 13.27 at an economy rate of 7.75.
Given he isn’t anywhere near the England plans, availability wouldn’t have been an issue either, but because we’re edgy, we thought otherwise.
It’s like the Sultans stumbled upon a treasure chest overloaded with Himalayan pink salt during their rebuilding journey which quality control continues to rub on their wounds as I’m writing this after throwing the towel ashore themselves; my head is spinning even thinking about the kind of journey their fans will be on this season (and I can guarantee you that it won’t be a fun one at all).
But had they retained Arafat, they’d only have had to resort to salt you can buy from your nearest grocery store, for he would’ve saved face.
But alas, it’s not to be.
As for the picks, I’d say the edginess in that department has already been covered.
This feels like the sunk-cost fallacy Giang talks about in The Creative Act episode, as though the Sultans’ management willingly opted for the edginess to spillover throughout the squad construction process, literally saying, “Alright, we’ve chosen to be edgy. We’re well past the point of return changing strategy now as the trades and retentions are already finalized, let’s just cross our fingers and see where it takes us with our picks.”
And where we find ourselves fingers crossed is a very high probability of a wooden spoon finish.
Later on in the episode, Ali Terai talks about a framework of being 2-3 steps into the crafting process and then just releasing version 1.0 out, not worrying about the flaws as you’re seeking feedback to go back and work on the previous steps afterward, but it seems like the Sultans didn’t do that in any way, shape, or form.
They wanted to be edgy, so they embodied it every step of the way.
One of the biggest themes in this episode was the creative stream and immersing yourself deep in it, finding the wonders that await you, and being willing to make mistakes throughout the process.
The creative stream the Sultans’ management immersed themselves in was insipid from the very beginning, and though they may have acknowledged any mistakes made throughout the process, they were fixated on their edginess before dipping their toes in the water, so what’s the point?
For all we know, the mistakes they thought they made were ones they should’ve committed to.
They wanted to embody edginess, resulting in version 1.0 being an all-in-one package: alpha, beta, and release, as though the Sultans took a page right out of the Cyberpunk 2077 playbook.
What we saw unfold in the draft was version 1.0 due to the sunk cost fallacy, which is why I expect the double-edged sword nature of edginess to have already booked them an early reservation for the bottom of the PSL9 table.
They prioritized the wrong players. Wisdom dictates simplicity as they say, and indeed it does provided you are wise.
But obviously, the Sultans weren’t wise, and this can coincidentally be confirmed via the “The Story of Sultans Draft.”
It is revealed to us that Dawid Malan was the first choice over Mayers and Jordan Cox, clearly influenced by the World Cup bias as seen in this upcoming season’s IPL mini-auction, in that what turned out to be a very disastrous campaign for favorites England, he was one of the standout performers.
But Malan wasn’t a beneficiary of this bias, for he didn’t even make the auction shortlist. He hasn’t played the IPL since the 2021 season for the Punjab Kings either, back when he was the #1 ICC T20I batter.
Preity Zinta was ecstatic to announce this fact on the Punjab Kings’ Instagram live during the auction after he was bought, and though he’s now long been dethroned, you’ll find analyst Leamon proud of procuring the former #1 ICC T20I batter in “The Story of Sultans Draft.”
Malan did have a stellar 2022 Men’s Hundred season when the Trent Rockets won the trophy, striking at an unimaginable 166.81 as the top-scorer, contrary to the output we’re accustomed to from him, as well as a 10-ball SR of 133 opening after taking over 10 balls to even score above a run a ball throughout his T20 career prior.
But this was more of an outlier season.
Not only does his 10-ball SR since 2022 read as 118, but the Rockets dropped him last season after just 4 matches.
So as an opening option, it was still a no-brainer to prioritize Mayers over him, for as I pointed out earlier, Mayers would’ve been an ideal powerplay maximizer to pair Rizwan up with at the top with Shan’s departure and rejig their opening combination complements altogether with his aggression, as well as providing an extra bowling option in your top 7 with his banana swing.
But alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
Tareen said that Malan will be their one-down batter, which is also his primary position for England.
Cox also bats there primarily and is not only regarded as one of the best white ball talents in England currently but is also a gun fielder and is just as good with the gloves.
The batting metrics are a testament to this fact too.
The Non-Boundary Strike Rate (NBSR) is a measure of how good the batter is at farming strike, the significance of which Scottish cricket analyst and talent scout Ronan Alexander talks about in a Red Inker episode.
He described an NBSR of 50 odd as very West Indian-like, while a 70+ NBSR is at the level of Glenn Maxwell and AB de Villiers, and against spin Cox falls in the latter category, overall considerably bettering Malan in all but two metrics.
So it certainly makes you wonder.
You could also tell that Cox was in high demand, given Islamabad United used their wildcard to draft him in Platinum, to be safeguarded from not being too late.
I also wouldn’t be surprised to see him get bids in the next IPL auction, as he’s genuinely a high-caliber talent the Sultans have essentially willingly opted to miss out on over a run-of-the-mill anchor you could easily find in any domestic pool.
This is backed by his output in the recently concluded SA20 for the Sunrisers Eastern Cape: 210 runs across 10 matches averaging 23.33 striking at 112.29, with two fifties and a top score of 63.
The top score came against the Durban Supergiants in Qualifier 1, taking 40 balls to even reach his half-century before a sudden smash on the accelerator for 5 balls meant that his overall score would read nicely after his dismissal and for the career numbers.
Sunrisers were able to defend their title, but Malan certainly played no major role in keeping the fort up throughout the tournament, and you can’t tell me that there aren’t a plethora of domestic options that can provide you with similar output.
This brings me to my next point regarding prioritizing the wrong players: they really did willingly choose to miss out on amazing talent, reflected by how it is revealed that Cox was meant to be backup over Reeza Hendricks in Gold.
Tareen revealed that he asked England white ball analyst Freddie Wilde to do some stats crunching for the Sultans as a part of their draft preparation, showing that even though they topped the charts for wicket prevention in the powerplay (largely because of how successful the Rizwan-Shan pair was in complementing each other as anchors who found an easily replicable method that worked for them with great consistency for 3 seasons), they finished 3rd or 4th in runs scored or match impact in the powerplay depending on the season.
Based on that, Tareen says they wanted a more dynamic batter to pair Rizwan with, which is a perfectly logical conclusion to reach naturally.
So who’d you expect to come out alive from this game of Russian Roulette?
Why, the guy who strikes at 70.3 in the powerplay averaging 10.9 opening in the SA20 of course: Reeza Hendricks!
Though the Joburg Super Kings were rewarded for persisting with him at the top for the entirety of last season with a 54-ball 96 in a losing cause against eventual champions Sunrisers Eastern Cape in the second semi-final, that’s literally his only performance of note in the SA20.
You may bring up his 79* off 56 deliveries against the Paarl Royals this season for which he won the Man of the Match Award despite Joburg losing after failing to defend 169 with an over to spare, but it’s because of him they lost.
It took him 41 balls to accelerate, immediately when the death overs began, and his score read as 43 then.
Given the ball was coming on nicely onto the bat throughout the match and the fact that there was still an over remaining to the chase, one would reasonably think that more runs on the board were warranted.
They recognized how out of line he was like a cog in the machine, so they didn’t even open with him during their successful rain-affected chase against MI Cape Town.
He was demoted to one down the following match and didn’t even bat at all after they had to chase 204 against Durban to scrap through for the final playoffs spot, in which they were yet again successful.
But when he had to come into bat against them chasing 212 during Qualifier 2, he scored 27 runs off 24 deliveries, knocking around singles during the middle overs when the required run rate had shot up above 15, nailing the final nail in the coffin for Joburg.
The selection is justified on the Relu Kattay podcast by saying that because Rizwan needs to run quick ones and twos, he needs someone to keep up with him, and that’s how Reeza miraculously comes into the picture.
But that should be the last thing that comes to mind when assembling an opening duo; it’s not how you maximize the powerplay at all.
This is followed by Tareen talking about Leamon mentioning South Africa’s 2022 tour of England, where he “took all their bowlers apart.”
But that’s only applicable to Sam Curran, against whom he scored over a third of his runs that series alone.
It’s just taking apart a specific matchup or a weak link of the bowling attack, which is anyway the bare minimum in modern-day T20 cricket.
I don’t rate Sam too highly, so I don’t view this as anything special either regardless.
This is one of two brush strokes to paint a misleading portrait in the form of his series numbers, the other stroke being his select brief bursts against a few other bowlers.
So I don't see how he’s the dynamic or world-beater batter Tareen wanted to pair Rizwan up with at the top.
I don’t see what’s dynamic about his SA20 numbers of 411 runs across 19 innings averaging 24.2 striking at 109.6.
I also don't see what's dynamic about his 10-ball SR of 115 as an opener since 2022 either.
In reality, as the intent chart below shows, though both he and Rizwan are cut from the same cloth family, Reeza is like low-quality denim with a rough texture feel and less durability, while Rizwan is the opposite.
It is pertinent to mention that Reeza has only batted at the death 4 times during this period, half of them coming in the SA20 where he went into the phase having eaten up a lot of deliveries:
41 (44) against Durban Supergiants
How do these numbers even warrant a PSL contract as an overseas opener, let alone scream that he’s dynamic?
Sure, his T20I bilateral numbers of 330 runs averaging 41.25 striking at 160.19 last year read quite well, but once again, it’s a misleading portrait.
I’d argue that the standards of the SA20 are superior to the vast majority of T20I bilaterals played in the current era.
And really, as the intent chart below suggests, Reeza is just a downgrade on Shan, who also belongs to the same cloth family.
So if there’s anything dynamic about drafting Reeza, it’s how dynamically they’ve gone above and beyond to take a step backward from even square one, which is why I’d find myself questioning the esteemed Pakistan pace conveyor belt if he ends up faring quite well against them, which is why for me, he is the second left-field pick Tareen talks about.
Coincidence that for me the two left-field picks are from the Sultans? I think not.
They’re edgy after all!
Tareen goes on to say that he can’t wait for him to open with Rizwan, but clearly we all can wait for the light of that day.
Both Reeza and Cox originally signed up for the Diamond category. It’s one thing to prioritize a Diamond player in Gold considering most foreign players are willing to be drafted one category lower than they’ve signed up for, but for your backup Gold option to also be who I personally see as a shining diamond is just lowballing him; it doesn’t indicate you’re much serious about constructing a title-winning squad.
And this lowballing is why I believe the Sultans find themselves as astute contenders for the wooden spoon-winning squad, given the players they ended up prioritizing as seen by their squad composition.
This component of the insipid spillover also serves as a seamless transition for the third and final one: what we’re meant to think the edginess and incorrect prioritization is.
We’re meant to believe that this is a revolution. I’ll start by saying that I believe it’s a great thing whenever an owner of a franchise is regularly engaging with the fans, especially the ones who support the team.
It forms a sense of kinship that can be extended by the feeling for said fans; it feels like a close-knit community where their opinion truly feels valued by the ones up top, unlike the Manchester City fans who often end up on my timeline even though I have zero interest in the sport.
But there’s a difference between finding yourself justifying certain nuances of your squad construction, versus every little thing.
If it’s the latter, something went wrong.
At that point, what you will find is your tweets bookmarked by the myriad of trolls to feast on in the event your justification ends up backfiring very badly come the PSL season, served a cold, seven-course meal of “Directed by Robert B. Weide” on a silver platter.
So what do you do?
Frame it as a revolution, obviously.
That’s what the tweets and “The Story of Sultans Draft” are: trying to sell us a dream.
While watching the documentary, I couldn’t help but think of Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB)’s Bold Diaries, where we viewers were meant to be the kids who were in awe of the magician’s tricks, such as when Mike Hesson happened to predict that Steve Smith wouldn’t go for more than 4 crores, more specifically that if RCB were to bid for him, no team would let them have him (which did happen as they backed out after the Delhi Capitals placed a second bid of 2.2 crores and secured him).
Except that these are uploaded after the auction is completed, and as for the magician tricks, we were too young to understand what was going on.
That’s what this short documentary screamed to me.
I didn’t hear any insights that could’ve enhanced one’s understanding of modern-day T20 cricket and the thought process that goes behind squad construction professionally.
It was more like a flowery, yet allusive red carpet. Like classic subliminal advertising: the viewer is supposed to think this is truly revolutionary.
And that’s what it’s being portrayed as on Twitter.
The first episode of “How I Write” I listened to was with American entrepreneur Sam Parr. Five seconds in, I was hooked, and one of the biggest takeaways for me was when he talked about making the slope as slippery as possible for crafting viral articles, headlines, and very engaging content.
In this case, the slipperiness felt artificial.
I wasn’t hooked because the slope was naturally slippery, but because of the comedic efforts in an attempt to make it seem so, I wanted to see just how hard it falls on its face.
And boy does it fall hard.
Paul Graham has written an essay on procrastination titled “Good and Bad Procrastination”, and he talks about 3 types of it: Type A, Type B, and Type C.
Type B procrastinators are described as ones working on something less important, and that’s what this documentary personifies.
Its structure is akin to the essays you had to write in English classes: start with a topic sentence, end your introductory paragraph with the thesis, X body paragraphs (depending on how emotionally invested your teacher was in making you hate writing and distorting your view on it for the rest of your life), and the conclusion paragraph where for whatever reason you’re supposed to restate your thesis differently as the final sentence.
In the eyes of your teacher and the 19th-century English professors who inherited the teaching of writing, this dry, melancholy derivation is perfect harmony. And you can tell based on how strict of a grader the former is.
The name of the game here is how good you are at defending your stance, irrespective of how flawed it may be objectively or subjectively.
So from that lens, the Sultans did a brilliant job, given the sources they’ve cited to back their evidence in arguing that what they’re doing is revolutionary (the sources being the credibility of the people involved), begging for the gravitas in the form of an A+.
Even the strictest of graders would probably fall for the trance and give them the A+, validating them as Type C procrastinators, defined as those working on something more important.
But it’s not the case outside of academia.
In the real world, at least in the eyes of people who know what they’re talking about, it’d go without saying that they’re Type B procrastinators, for it’s a tacit understanding.
But wait a minute.
“Because no other team in PSL history has done what we’re doing, it’s a revolution. It’s unlike anything Pakistani fans have ever seen before.”
You’d think a fascist regime was in power if you knew nothing about the country and the first thing you happened to come across related to Pakistan were tweets promoting this documentary along these lines receiving high levels of engagement, as this isn’t the first time in cricket history, let alone sports history that fans are getting the opportunity to view behind-the-scenes footage.
You’d have to look no further than Cricket Fever on Netflix and The Test which has been renewed for a third season by Amazon Prime.
Data is also at the forefront of this revolution, but its portrayal on Twitter will make you think it’s the first time the PSL will have a taste of sports analytics if you’re a cricket fan who happens to know nothing about the country.
And that’s literally what’s being done, framed as some never seen before USP.
It’s 2024, it’s supposed to be the norm now.
Regardless, Islamabad United are often credited with incorporating data-driven decisions into their squad construction ever since the league’s conception, a major reason why they won 2 titles in the first 3 seasons before teams finally began to follow suit.
So it’s not the first time.
It’s merely being conveniently forgotten for the sake of pushing a narrative, as though Donald Trump was funding the Sultans’ campaign despite just being ordered to pay $453.5 million in damages in a civil fraud lawsuit with how the zeitgeist of the room screams “Make the Multan Sultans great again.”
You’d think it was 15th-century Florence if you were an outside observer, where the Donatellos, Leonardos, and Michaelangelos of the cricketing world happened to join forces under the Sultans’ banner.
In cricketing terms, you’d think that MS Dhoni, Ricky Ponting, and Eoin Morgan are a part of the Sultans’ management the way they’re portraying things to be like we’re about to bear witness to a Pakistani rendition of Morgan’s white-ball revolution after their horrendous 2015 World Cup campaign.
If you were a middle-aged uncle who fell out of love with Pakistan cricket after heartbreaks such as Mohali 2011 and came across this, you may truly believe that they’re saviors, one who will save the one sport in the country that still has a semblance of relevance, like how England’s red ball head coach Brendon McCullum portrays himself as the one who will save Test cricket with Bazball.
If you’re a young child and watch this documentary, the cast would be akin to the magicians: you’re in awe of them.
You’d believe they would get rid of the corruption that has tainted your wonderful sport, for they are altruistic, and that every player they drafted was picked on merit, a word you’ll often come across certain journalists harping and beating up like a dead horse.
But sorry to burst your bubble everyone, but in reality, it’s a damn farce, not the second coming of 15th-century Florence.
It’s like we’re meant to give them a pat on the back just because coverage of the sport in the country is well behind most countries, make them feel like the kid who’s over the moon after their figurestick drawing of the family was called the best picture ever by their mother and pinned on the fridge for the rest of the family members to awe over how disproportionately their eyes are drawn.
It’s like they read Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, a master copywriter who popularized toothpaste after realizing that people wouldn’t buy the promise of preventing future tooth decay, but one of a beautiful smile.
The principle is replicated here by the lack of technical insights, just doing the bare minimum that they know the masses would buy: selling the idea that they know what they’re doing because so and so are involved, and these are their credentials.
But it’s just a mirage many people have managed to buy into, not a tactical masterclass like Hopkins.
There’s a fine line between a high-risk-high-reward gamble and being plain stupid, and this is the latter.
We’re meant to believe that releasing Rossouw for Iftikhar is a revolution.
We’re also meant to believe that playing a top 4 of Rizwan, Reeza, Malan and Yasir Khan is a revolution.
Yasir is a promising, attacking Emerging opener who represented the Gladiators last season, and Zalmi before that.
He’s opened in 4 of his 6 PSL matches, and unsurprisingly, showed the most promise in his natural position.
Yet for the Sultans, Tareen has said that he’ll come in at #4.
Oftentimes, I’ve noticed that teams who have a batter to satisfy their Emerging quota are deliberately well down the order so the more established players get as many balls as possible.
You can’t get away with that if your Emerging player is a bowler, but regardless this shows a lack of trust in your Emerging pick(s).
This seems to be yet another case of that, which is far from revolutionary; it’s outright disrespectful.
We’re also meant to believe that a middle-order downgrade that isn’t only easily the biggest one in PSL history by a country mile, but also in T20 league history is a revolution.
Last season, they had the services of Rossouw, Kieron Pollard, David Miller, and Tim David, a quartet a team in any league would die to have.
Your middle order consisted of a PSL GOAT, two all-time T20 greats, and a very promising finisher.
Their destructive nature also enabled the vast success the Rizwan-Shan duo relished in, despite its USP being very counterproductive in the lack of powerplay maximizing to take their precious time, settle in, and begin accelerating after the powerplay.
Even in the rare instances one of them or both failed and/or ended up playing a negative impact innings by eating up too many deliveries, they’d often come in to save the day like Spiderman.
I don’t see how Yasir, Tayyab, and Khushdil Shah will be able to do the same at the same, elite consistency we were accustomed to for Rizwan-Reeza.
Miller and David are unavailable for this season, which is out of the Sultans’ control of course, but what’s the rationale for releasing Pollard?
I understand that the byzantine PSL retention system will often force teams to make some tough calls, but they didn’t even retain any of their previous overseas players who were both available and didn’t want to leave the franchise.
Despite Pollard’s availability for this season being partial, it’s still nothing too major.
He’s been retired from the IPL for the past two seasons, but he’s still bossing it in all other leagues (especially including last PSL).
There’s a far greater abundance of attacking overseas middle-order batters in contrast to domestically, highlighted by the middle-order options the Sultans now have this season.
There’s no justification given in the documentary, and regardless, I’d chalk it up as plain stupidity.
When talking about Chris Jordan, Leamon says that he is reliable and experienced.
With 333 T20s and 88 T20Is under his belt, the latter is certainly correct, but I’m not so sure about the former.
A quick search on Cricmetric’s Player Matrix will tell you that out of 15 bowlers who bowled at least 300 deliveries at the death (overs 17-20) in T20s since 2022, he’s one of 11 bowlers whose economy rate is over 9.
So I’m not so sure that’s reliable, especially when we’re being sold a revolution.
We’re also essentially told to believe that this is a revolution because they were the most successful PSL team in the past 4 years based on win percentages.
And that for me is the icing on the cake; the jokes keep writing for themselves.
To put it bluntly, no fan gives a shit about having the best win percentage, it’s the trophies that matter.
If you have the trophy, it’s a bonus, but you qualified for 3 finals in the past 4 years and managed to win only 1.
The question is then posed itself: what has stopped them from not going all the way in the other 2 finals?
And since they didn’t bother to take a serious crack at it, it’s not at all resolved.
At that point, you must learn humility, for heavy is the head that wears the crown, and selling a revolution doesn’t relieve any of that weight; it only adds to it.
Post-pandemic, the PSL has virtually become a 4 team league owing to the dreadful management of the Karachi Kings and Quetta Gladiators respectively.
The Kings have been unable to qualify for the playoffs the last 2 seasons, and the Gladiators haven’t even made the playoffs once since winning their only trophy in 2019.
But this season, baby steps have been taken towards improvement.
It’s now virtually a 5 team league, with both teams finally smelling the coffee.
Karachi seems to be in serious business since drafting Leus du Plooy in the Supplementary draft to go along with the ceiling of Arafat provided he starts, rivaling the Gladiators’ pick of Laurie Evans, to go along with their picks of Rutherford and Akeal in the main draft, both of whom are high-quality T20 players (especially Rutherford).
So I anticipate a lover’s quarrel for the #4 spot, while the Sultans will be fighting a lone battle for the wooden spoon.
I believe there’s a certain threshold beyond which hiring someone off Cricket Twitter would yield your team better results, and I believe they have well exceeded it.
You could hand over the keys to a random Twitterati who may frequently be clowned by his mutuals for being a “T20 merchant,” and I could guarantee they’d cook up something better than the convoluted soup that is this season’s Sultans squad.
Most professionals involved in the analytics side of cricket would probably see this as a case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but I don’t think this is the case at all.
Oftentimes, I come across tweets of squads constructed in mock T20 drafts and auctions. You pick any one of those team owners to take charge of the Sultans, and both the squad and the standard of the league would see a world of difference.
The analytical understanding of cricket’s intricacies may be viewed as too esoteric for us mere mortals to understand, but this largely has to do with how gatekept the riches are compared to other major sports.
With the free resources we have available however, I believe it has laid the foundation for those who have a knack for cricket analysis to go above and beyond like certain well-regarded Cricket Twitter accounts, all of whom would have left anything but an insipid taste had they been a part of the Sultans’ management, and I wouldn’t find myself writing this article.
And on the topic of squad construction, we’re meant to believe that it’s a revolution because head coach Abdur Rehman says that what we’ll find is that the squad isn’t pace-heavy, spin-heavy, or batting-heavy.
But to a certain extent, that’s the root of insipidness.
In principle, every team’s squad should be balanced, but it’s more important to take into account recurring trends you find in venues across the country and stock up as much as possible on attributes the domestic pool is known for, which in Pakistan’s case is 140 KPH+ tearaway bowlers.
The importance is further amplified in a traditional home-away season which the PSL isn’t, but recurring trends alone still merit squad construction in that accordance.
Personally, it’s a shame to see this come off a team that Andy Flower was in charge of for the four seasons Tareen references.
It’s like replacing the head chef of a restaurant whose signature dish and name alone attracted 99% of the customers (or certainly in this case, the fans, given Andy does have a bit of a niche cult following of sorts given how much he’s achieved as a white ball coach).
You don’t want to go out of business, so instead of focusing on what the successor and the rest of the chefs are good at, you copy the former head chef’s modus operandi word-for-word as an easy way out, expecting customers to not notice.
But oh, they will notice, and I certainly have at least.
It’s like whenever Squidward is in charge of frying Krabby Patties instead of Spongebob: a disaster.
That’s what this “revolution” being sold to us feels like: a façade imitating Andy’s work.
However, unless you do intentionally horrible, there’s always some promise.
I’ve already talked about Willey not being as bad as he’s being made out to be, Yasir being a promising prospect as an opener, and Topley being a high-quality acquisition had he not been ruled out.
However, there is a bit of a saving grace in one of their backup domestic choices: Mohammad Ali.
He can generate extra bounce off his hard lengths owing to his height, with a very good yorker accuracy complemented by the back-of-the-hand variation he has.
From the matches I saw him play in the NT20, he looked quite smart with his over-construction despite not being as quick as you’d expect from Pakistani pacers, primarily operating in the 130-135 KPH zone.
He will now most likely start in place of Ihsanullah, but though there is obviously no comparison between Mohammad and Topley, I believe that he will be one of the few Sultans’ standout performers this season, although the bar is very low given how insipid and edgy their overall squad construction is.
They also signed Johnson Charles in the Supplementary draft, whose post-pandemic T20 rise I’ve written about.
Even though I’ve seen him create several catching opportunities during the powerplay in trying to maximize it with how many thick edges fly off his bat every time I see him bat in the CPL, he’s still a good quality player with sharp gears against pace.
He's also someone whom the Sultans are already familiar with, as he’s played for them twice in 2019 and 2021, playing a handy role in their title-winning season during the latter.
Lastly, there’s Faisal Akram, whom they acquired from the Kings via trading Shan.
Chinamen bowlers have seen a plethora of success in recent times, such as the resurgence of Kuldeep Yadav, Noor Ahmad, and Tabraiz Shamsi.
There’s a dearth of them across the T20 circuit generally, particularly in Pakistan, where Faisal is one of only two mainstream chinamen bowlers in the country, the other being Zalmi’s Sufiyan Muqeem.
As a result, the national team players have struggled to pick Faisal whenever he was called in to bowl so they could have some practice against teams who have a chinaman bowler at their disposal, with Babar Azam even being dismissed by him.
His current T20 career numbers are far from the best, but it’s only 13 matches in, and chinamen bowlers his age seem to have issues in regards to length and line control trying to cut the angle down, something I regularly see with Noor.
But Faisal has former captain Misbah-ul-Haq’s stamp of approval, wanting to see him get more opportunities.
He’s someone who I believe will come to serve the Pakistan national team for quite a while, especially in T20Is, so the Sultans have certainly stumbled upon a literal, rare gem on their rebuilding journey whom they can refine and reap the benefits of for a long time to come, not turning a blind eye to a gold treasure on this occasion.
It was a smart trade actually, but the player they drafted to fill Shan’s shoes, as well as how they used the pick acquired from the trade takes away from it.
And that’s why these select few players aren’t enough to overpower the insipid taste the Sultans have left personally that is being packaged to us as a revolution, especially given two of their premier pacers in Ihsanullah and Topley are now unavailable this season, which is why for me, this stands as an easy self-fulfilling prophecy for the Sultans to finish with the wooden spoon.
I find it very hard to imagine them even barely scrapping through to the playoffs let alone qualifying for them, but sport can be a funny thing at times.
So even if they do end up with the wooden spoon as I anticipate, I wouldn’t be surprised if their only wins end up being against the eventual champions, something we saw last season with the Karachi Kings, along with defeating Sultans once, the other finalist.
The lone defeat the West Indies suffered in their triumphant 2016 T20 World Cup campaign was the iconic upset at the hands of Afghanistan, who finished at the bottom of their group, while Argentina also managed to lose against Saudi Arabia before finally making Lionel Messi’s dream come true in 2022.
But I also wouldn’t be surprised if they achieved the unwanted feat the then Saint Lucia Stars were saved from by rain back in CPL2017: losing all their matches.
Yet at the same time, I should also acknowledge that I’ve had very poor luck when it has come to such predictions.
For all I know, Reeza may end up doing well and even score the most runs this PSL9, and rather than me questioning the Pakistan pace conveyor belt, I'll find the unpopular opinion swords swung at me with strokes akin to that of the Edo period Samurai for stating that he shouldn't have gotten a PSL contract.
However, what I will say is if he does finish as the top-scorer, I’d wager that his numbers and total impact would read more like KL Rahul’s in the past few IPLs in pursuit of the Orange Cap and remaining in the mix of India’s white-ball talks by playing music to the selector’s ears: fat averages.
For all I know, the Sultans may end up comfortably qualifying for the playoffs, and even go on to win the finals, with the All Out Twitter account ending up being quote-tweeted by the myriad of trolls, served a cold, seven-course meal of “Directed by Robert B. Weide” on a silver platter.
But I'll stay firm on my ground and say that whatever happens, I do not expect it to deviate from what I view as the inevitable outcome: the Multan Sultans finishing at the bottom of the table, for no way is this squad the same caliber as the ones that managed to qualify for the finals thrice in the last 4 seasons.
Yet, I’m a human like you, the reader, and obviously, I can’t be right every time; none of us can ever be.
So I may very well find my jaw dropping at the sight of all odds somehow stacked against me as I’d see it, and I may need to learn humility and be put in my place.
I may end up being the jackass who talked out of his ass with a lackluster understanding of T20 cricket biting off more than he could chew for 14,013 words.
But by the same token, I will also pose this question: is the crux of sports fans and pertinent microcosms not to discuss what one deems as good and bad?
There’s a reason why the most stubborn and/or passionate sports fans won’t back down as though it’s ironclad.
As Paul Graham would say, taste isn’t subjective for such fans like us. It’s not personal preference in that we agree to disagree in our interpretation of modern-day T20 cricket, there are right and wrong ones.
And for me, the Sultans’ interpretation is blatantly wrong, and there’s absolutely no two ways about it, for this is not how you build the next dynasty at all.
Don’t shoot the messenger however, it’s just how it is.
We all have experienced the spills of the spillover effect on a day-to-day basis, whether we explicitly recognize it or not.
I happen to fall in the former, and whenever I find I’ve lost some time for things I have to expend a lot of brainpower, I find myself instantly mentally outlining how to be efficient with the remaining time I’ve blocked out for it.
Because I viewed the Sultans’ squad construction as an insipid spillover, I decided to read some literature on the origins of the spillover effect, and two research papers studying its effects.
The literature of then-University of Michigan professor Graham L Staines had three major takeaways:
A high degree of involvement
Subjective measures of work
Matched activities between on-the-job and off-the-job
I see the Sultans’ degree of involvement only being portrayed as high in the documentary when it isn’t.
If it were, we wouldn’t have bore witness to the biggest middle-order downgrade in both the PSL and T20 cricket’s history, and nor would we have seen the Sultans willingly settle for just Iftikhar Ahmed in letting go of Rilee Rossouw as per his will.
If it were, we wouldn’t be seeing every little thing being justified by the owner on Twitter, as well as frequently extolling the efforts of the management as if they’ve won the season, when it’s yet to begin.
However, I think the PSL should have its version of IPL’s Fair Play Award specifically for the Sultans. An extravagant red carpet ceremony in formal recognition would also be fitting, as it's fair play to them for their efforts in convincing us there was a high degree of involvement in this shitshow being sold to us as a revolution, portraying their subjective as the objective.
We’re also supposed to believe that there are subjective measures of work at play here, in that they’re proud of what they’re doing in their respective roles, for as the research puts it, if you’re happy with your job, you will not be spilling over any troubles to burden one with since you hold the job in high regard.
I certainly wouldn’t hold my job in high regard if I were a part of the before and after of the Sultans’ squad no matter how you told me to look at it, and nor would I be selling it as a revolution on Twitter.
It makes me wonder how many coaches and analysts must there be in the world who’d be proud of going from a middle order of Rossouw, David Miller, Kieron Pollard, and Tim David to that composed of Dawid Malan, Yasir Khan, Tayyab Tahir, and Khushdil Shah; I imagine the figure to be zero, for no one in their right mind would deem it rationale at all.
The literature also points out that if you’re happy with your job, your off-the-job activities will show for it (ie you’ll be engaging in leisurely activities that coincide with your work), with Staines writing that the strongest relationship for the spillover effect was seen when measuring these variables.
On that basis, I’d question what cricket content must they be happily consuming that enabled them to turn the Sultans from title contenders the past 4 seasons to now wooden spoon contenders as I see it, of their own volition.
You’d think going by “The Story of Sultans Draft" taking all of this into account, they celebrated their edgy, insipid decisions like the NASA celebration meme after the Curiosity Rover successfully touched down on Mars when the cameras weren’t rolling, for after all, they’re proud their high degree of involvement, holding it in high regard.
I’ll finally stop yelling at the clouds like an old man by leaving you with this: if you were data-driven, you wouldn’t explicitly have to tell us about the new experience we’re about to get; we’d be doing that for you free of charge, for what could be better than word of mouth advertising?
If you were data-driven, these wouldn’t have been the like-for-like replacements of the Multan Sultans batting powerhouse, and nor would you feel the need to flex the fact you’re the most successful team based on something as absurd as win percentage; BASRA’s sister in this case.
If you were data-driven, most of these picks wouldn’t have bore fruit keeping in mind the four venues, and nor would you need to mention that a strong domestic core is key to winning T20 leagues (unless you’re the ILT20 or GT20 Canada).
These are just a few of the boundless flavor profiles of the insipid taste left by the Multan Sultans’ spillover.