A quick guide to drafts – target bowlers, use data and go local

Tomorrow’s Hundred draft is a rarity in English sport but there is science behind the razzmatazz ‘Any league is won by the quality of the domestic talent in a side’

It will be a spectacle that English sport, never mind English cricket, has never witnessed before. In prime time tomorrow night, 570 leading players from around the world will be presented to eight new franchises in the hope of being drafted for the Hundred – the competition English cricket believes will revolutionise the domestic game.

For those watching, the focus will lie in the razzmatazz of this ostentatiously made-for-tv event. But for those assembling their teams, the aim will be squarely on building a side to win. At a time of an increasing financial chasm within European club football, the Hundred has followed Twenty20 leagues throughout the world in embracing the model of talent distribution in United States sports leagues, one designed to ensure competitive balance.

All teams in the draft have a total of £960,000 to spend on 14 players – 12 after discounting the two local players per team who have already been allocated in advance – buttressed by their one England Test player and a wild-card pick made just before next year’s competition.

No team will be able to gripe about being outspent by their opponents, only to lament having been out-thought by them.

A glitzy event to herald the birth of a tournament naturally invites comparisons with the inaugural Indian Premier League auction in 2008. Yet the anarchy of the first years of the IPL is unlikely to be repeated. Then, Royal Challengers Bangalore built a side brimming with Test giants ill-suited to the T20 game. While they bombed, Rajasthan Royals, the most penurious franchise, won the IPL through embracing lessons that are now simple T20 common sense: the importance of specialist skills; the value of continuity and role clarity and ensuring overseas players are available for the entire competition; and the critical importance of bowling, especially wrist-spin.

There is unlikely to be such a contrast in approaches and analytical rigour at the onset of the Hundred. The cricket analytics company Cricviz, which is contracted to work with the Oval franchise, has even converted a player’s T20 record to the demands of the Hundred. Several coaches – Tom Moody and Stephen Fleming among them – arrived in London fresh from the T10 draft in the United Arab Emirates.

So, outsmarting rivals will be altogether harder than in the first years of the IPL. But there remain opportunities for savvy teams to gain an edge.

Chris Gayle, for all his star power, is unlikely to be available beyond the first season – he has just turned 40 – making him a considerable risk. For lusty hitting, teams would be better served recruiting his international team-mates Nicholas Pooran and Shimron Hetmyer to serve them for many years. Smart sides have studied the Future Tours Programme to identify exactly when players will be available: for Babar Azam and Kane Williamson, say, much of the Hundred clashes with Test commitments.

Yet, for all the focus upon overseas talent, in tournaments the world over a simple rule tends to hold. “Any league is won by the quality of domestic talent,” observes Adishwar Pillai, the analyst for Mumbai Indians and the Barbados Tridents, who both won their T20 leagues this year.

The example of the Caribbean Premier League, whose draft system – rather than the IPL’S auction – is the nearest to the Hundred, may be particularly instructive. Guyana Amazon

Gary Kirsten @Gary_kirsten Can’t wait for The Hundred Draft and to pick the [insert team name] squad on Sunday at 7pm. #Thehundreddraft

Warriors, who won 11 games in a row until losing to Barbados Tridents in the final, have built a team around young local players, who have improved together.

“There’s got to be a premium on young English talent,” says one draft insider. Recruiting the best young home talent may be a way to “build whole new franchises not just for now but with the long term in mind”. As all franchises have foreign coaches, being the best at uncovering unheralded domestic ability may be a team’s best chance of gaining an edge.

Local players with the potential to improve rapidly in the years ahead include Warwickshire fast bowler Henry Brookes, Sussex all-rounder Delray Rawlins, Surrey big hitter Will Jacks and

Derbyshire leg-spinner Matt Critchley. Regardless of format, teams with the best bowling attacks tend to win and there is little reason to think the Hundred will be different, especially with the chance to bowl 10 consecutive balls, making death-bowling prowess even more important.

In the cauldron of a live televised draft, the 100 seconds

each team receive for each pick will seem ample for those who have planned diligently, but inadequate for frazzled teams suddenly realising they have left a gaping hole in their side.

The stakes are high: what unfolds tomorrow night will go a long way to determining who wins not just next summer but for several years to come.