Al Paton’s KFC SuperCoach BBL beginner’s guide and expert team

Al Paton isn’t a cricket tragic but he was one of the top ranked KFC SuperCoaches in BBL09. Here is his team for this summer plus the ultimate beginner’s guide.

Al Paton showed his KFC SuperCoach prowess by finishing 117th last season

Go hard or go home.

Or will it be go hard, then take my bat and ball and go home?

I’m pinning all my hopes for the 2020-21 summer on the first three rounds, so I’ll find out pretty soon if this strategy blows up in my face.

Last summer I finished with a personal-best overall ranking of 117th after basing almost all my trades on maximising teams with double-game rounds.

It’s a feature unique to BBL among SuperCoach games that allows you to double up when teams play twice in one round. Put your captaincy on a star from that team and you get his score x 4. How can we resist?

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Is Nathan Coulter-Nile flying under the KFC SuperCoach BBL radar? Picture: Will Russell/Getty Images

Melbourne Stars play twice in Round 1 so I’m going for broke with six of them in my squad - although Will Pucovski could miss out if he makes the Test team.

But there are more layers to my plan than that. In Round 2 we get two teams on the double - Hobart Hurricanes and Adelaide Strikers. So I’m getting ready with three Hurricanes on the field, and two Strikers waiting in the wings on the bench - Adelaide has the bye in the first round but I want as many as possible for Rounds 2 and 3 when they play consecutive doubles (as soon as Round 1 lockout ends Rashid Khan and Alex Carey are on top of my shopping list).

I’ve left nearly $100k in the bank to make that possible, bearing in mind I also need to clear out my Stars players by Round 3 when they have the bye.

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I think I’ve juggled the numbers to make it all work but of course an untimely injury or selection surprise could bring the whole thing undone. I also managed to survive last summer without worrying too much about having playing emergencies, which could be more of a factor this year. I’m taking a risk by just going for the cheapest players available who experts with much more BBL knowledge than me say are a chance to get a game.

After Round 3 the fixture reverts to normal for a while, so I’ll have to rethink my approach. But hopefully by then I’ll have a commanding lead over Tim Michell, The Phantom and Co in our office comp.

There’s only one way to find out.

WICKETKEEPERS

Peter Handscomb (Hurricanes) $97,600 WKP/BAT

Bench: Baxter Holt (Thunder) $42,000 WKP/BAT

BATSMEN

Darcy Short (Hurricanes) $245,200 BAT/BWL

Marcus Stoinis (Stars) $185,700 BAT/BWL (captain)

Will Jacks (Hurricanes) $148,000 BAT/BWL

Hilton Cartwright (Stars) $115,400 BAT

Will Pucovski (Stars) $42,000 BAT

Bench: Jake Weatherald (Strikers) $122,500 BAT

Oliver Davies (Thunder) $42,000 BAT

Matt Renshaw will play for the Strikers in BBL10. Picture: Dave Hunt/AAP

BOWLERS

Glenn Maxwell (Stars) $185,000 BWL/BAT

A dam Zampa (Stars) $184,100 BWL

Nathan Coulter-Nile (Stars) $138,600 BWL

Nathan Ellis (Hurricanes) $113,000 BWL

Cameron Green (Scorchers) $62,500 BWL/BAT

Bench: Matthew Renshaw (Strikers) $137,000 BWL/BAT

Mitch Owen (Hurricanes) $42,000 BWL/BAT

Al’s beginner guide: You don’t need to be a cricket tragic to play SuperCoach BBL

Cricket tragics are already halfway to picking their team for the new KFC SuperCoach BBL season.

I have a word of advice: Don’t worry about them.

The truth is they are also suffering from information overload from studying the stats, fixtures and team lists and gaming out all the possible permutations and selection combinations.

Who needs that stress?

Of course, I’m perfectly describing myself in the lead-up to every AFL season, but KFC SuperCoach BBL allows me the pleasure of just playing the game for fun – and it’s amazing how that can translate into actual results.

I finished last summer ranked 117th of more than 73,000 players, by far my best final rank in any form of KFC SuperCoach.

Now, I’m not suggesting that anyone can enter at the last second and walk away with the $25,000 grand prize.

Or that I’m a total cricket dunce. In fact, I had a very undistinguished career for the Heathmont juniors as a wicketkeeper/opening batsman (very solid forward defence) and have been to my share of one-dayers and Boxing Day Tests. But I have to admit I’m not always glued to every delivery of a five-day epic and the power play does leave me scratching my head sometimes.

However, there’s a guaranteed way to make the summer of cricket more fun – add a dose of SuperCoach. I watched nearly every BBL game last year counting Marcus Stoinis’s sixes, Tom Curran’s dot balls and trying to work out Rashid Khan’s economy rate.

SuperCoach BBL is a different and very fun form of the game and while some aspects can be a bit head-spinning, here are the keys to my success – which I hope will help me to an even better result this summer.

Marcus Stoinis scored the most runs in a BBL tournament last season.

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THE FIXTURE IS YOUR FRIEND

Keep this link handy (https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/cricket/big-bash/kfc-supercoach-bbl-which-players-to-pick-and-what-the-fixture-means-for-your-team/news-story/efc628cf1c2431c3b8bccffb63c94a2c)

An easy way to gain an edge is just to stay on top of which teams were playing when.

The turnaround between rounds is often a matter of hours, not days, so you need to be ready to make your moves.

SuperCoach AFL players got a taste of this during this year’s fixture frenzy, which means my edge is probably gone!

CAPTAIN ON THE DOUBLE

The other key fixture factors are byes and double-game rounds. You obviously don’t want players in your starting side who aren’t playing due to a bye, and you can score big by stacking your squad with players from a team that plays twice in one round.

This summer’s fixture is less crazy than in previous years but the opening three rounds will be as hectic as ever – presenting a huge chance to get a jump on other players.

For starters, in Round 1 Melbourne Stars have a double-game round so I’ll be using a lot of my salary cap on big scorers like Stoinis, Glenn Maxwell and Adam Zampa – and one of them will be my captain. On the other side of the coin Adelaide Strikers have the bye, so there’s no point starting with Rashid. But he’ll be coming straight in for Round 2 when the Strikers play twice.

BUT WAIT

The ability to use three trades every week to play the fixture comes with risks.

Look ahead: I don’t get caught up playing four-dimensional chess and trying to predict an entire season’s worth of trades but it’s probably not a good idea to have eight Melbourne Stars in your team for Round 1 (even though that would produce a huge score on their double) when they have the bye in Round 3 and you can only trade a maximum of three players out per week. Look a round or two ahead before pulling the trade trigger.

Call-up chaos: One big difference between KFC SuperCoach BBL and AFL is my AFL stars aren’t subject to a late call-up to represent their country. You can plan for this to a degree by watching the squads and dates for Tests, one-dayers and T20 clashes, but stay on your toes and watch the cricket news because selection changes can drop at any time.

Picking Tom Curran helped Al Paton finish 117th overall last season.

Loopholes: Like AFL, you can get two shots at the best captaincy score by using the vice-captain loophole. But the timing of games can get very tricky especially when some teams play twice in the round (in that case they are locked out at the start of their first game). Finding a donut can also be tricky – picking a dirt cheap wicketkeeper can be handy (Baxter Holt from the Sydney Thunders is a prime candidate) but make sure you’ve got a WKP/BAT DPP somewhere to cover for your starting keeper if he has a bye or misses a game.

ONE FINAL TIP

BBL – and specifically SuperCoach BBL – is a fun game, so pick players who are fun to watch. Is it the best tactical play to spend so much cash on Stoinis and Maxwell? Maybe not, but I like the Stars and those guys are just awesome to watch when they get going.

And of course don’t forget to get your friends into a league and, lastly, you can’t really get into the game unless you follow @tim_michell and @supercoachbbl on Twitter.

Good luck!

MORE KFC SUPERCOACH BBL:

Tom Sangster reveals his KFC SuperCoach BBL team for BBL10

KFC SuperCoach BBL champion Tom Aitken reveals his hints for BBL10

SuperCoach Plus Article: The Phantom’s KFC SuperCoach BBL power rankings

Originally published as Al Paton’s KFC SuperCoach BBL beginner’s guide and expert team