BBL Fantasy Captains – Rd 1

Welcome to the first edition of not-Calvin’s Captain’s for BBL Fantasy. Round one kicks off tomorrow and it’s time to decide who you should be locking in as your first captain of the season.

There are a few things we need to consider when picking our captain with the first and foremost being teams that are playing two games.

This means you should probably pick from Melbourne Stars, Sydney Sixers or Sydney Thunder players as they play twice.

Having said that, there’s no guarantee that playing two games will mean your players will score more and so you can’t rule out players from other teams.

You also want to consider all-rounders because you want your BBL Fantasy captain to have as many opportunities to score points as possible.

Before the top five is unveiled, let’s look at a few candidates.

The first guy worth considering is the ever reliable Michael Hussey. Considering the Thunder play twice, there’s pretty good odds Hussey will score well in at least one of the games, meaning he should have a fairly decent captain’s score overall.

Chris Gayle is another interesting one, but with his recent back issues I’m not sure taking the punt on him as captain in game one is the best idea. The Renegades also only play the one match. Having said that, it’s against Brisbane who have a relatively poor bowling line up.

Brad Haddin will open the batting for the Sixers in all likelihood and that means he’ll have plenty of opportunities to score in the Sixers two games. A guy of Haddin’s quality could produce a very nice captain’s score, although it is unclear whether he’ll be doing the wicketkeeping. If he isn’t, that’s one avenue of points taken away.  Michael Lumb is the other Sixer worth considering who could either go very big, or he could produce a -20.

Veteran international stars Jacques Kallis, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene might be a little risky in round one and it’s probably worth looking elsewhere just to let them get a game under their belt.

Here are the top five I’ve chosen for this round:

1. Shane Watson
2. Glenn Maxwell
3. James Faulkner
4. Aaron Finch
5. Kevin Pietersen

Kevin Pietersen is in good form with the bat, the Stars play twice and he’s shown how dominant he can be in the BBL. If all goes well, he could have a very big score to his name.

Aaron Finch should dominate The Brisbane Heat and you can back him in to get his tournament off to a good start. He may even give himself a bowl, you never know.

James Faulkner may not bat in both innings, but all he needs is one quick-fire 20 to go with two games of bowling and he could produce a massive score.

The same goes for Glenn Maxwell who has the massive bonus of being a top order all-rounder meaning he has a plethora of scoring options in his double game round.

It’s that exact reason why I’ve put Shane Watson at number one. Watson will most likely open the batting in both games and, while we don’t know for sure, he should bowl in both games as well. This means he really has four opportunities to score points considering he’s playing two games. Watson has everyone opportunity to produce a massive score despite the risk of him not bowling – I’ll be locking him in as my captain this week. Who will you go with?