Firstly, I've seen Moneyball, a great movie.
Secondly, I agree with a lot of points that you've made. The nature of wickets in the IPL has been an eye-opener. These wickets are almost certain to be the same ones we see during the T20 WC.
I posted a squad which I would take to the WC in the thread, but I'll put it below:
Openers:
Babar Azam (c)
Mohammad Rizwan (vc)(wk)
Haider Ali/Sharjeel Khan
Middle-Order:
Sohaib Maqsood
Shoaib Malik/Mohammad Hafeez (subject to fitness)
Iftikhar Ahmed
Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk)
All-Rounders:
Imad Wasim
Mohammad Nawaz
Aamir Yamin
Pacers:
Shaheen Shah Afridi
Hasan Ali
Wahab Riaz/Imran Khan Sr.
Shahnawaz Dahani
Spinner:
Usman Qadir/Zahid Mahmood
On these wickets, 160-170 is a great score for batting, because even the worst spinners have some purchase from the wickets.
If we just look at the teams that are doing well, we'll find that their pacers have good variations such as the slower-ball, and they have a variety of spinners for different occasions.
If we start analyzing the spinners:
Ashwin, Axar Patel, Lalit Yadav from DC all tend to bowl at the stumps with correct field placements. They don't rip the ball, but the spongey nature of the wickets means that the ball can get stuck and doesn't come onto the bat easily. On these wickets, I have seen guys like Mohammad Rizwan, Sarfaraz Ahmed, and Shoaib Malik consistently keep the scoreboard ticking, which is what is needed.
Wrist-spinners have struggled a bit more, though their performances have shown that the googly is a very important weapon on these surfaces, as the ball can tend to grip once in a while. Spinners who bowl straight at the stumps have been largely successful, looking at examples like Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine, and more.
The pacers succeeding right now are those that possess good variations both off the pitch and in the air. Harshal Patel has been incredible to watch, his slower-balls and his cutters are both wonderfully executed and show that even if batsmen can pick the slower ball, dispatching it is a different issue on its own.
I'll point to a much better example being Mumbai Indians. Touted for their middle order that possesses so much hitting power, they have failed miserably. The key on these wickets is having batsmen who can find singles and doubles, and score the odd boundary. This is why players like Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ventakesh Iyer, and others are doing so well, and are so consistent. They exploit the powerplay but understand that saving wickets for the death allows them to explode.
Might I remind people here that Pakistan became the #1 T20 team in the UAE thanks to this model: accumulate runs in the powerplay, continue to keep the scoreboard ticking, and explode towards the end. This model is very successful, and a number of IPL teams are demonstrating it now. IPL teams that tried exploding before the 15th over have succumbed to major collapses and this is a sign that we need players capable of understanding game situations, and the situation on these UAE wickets.
Moving on, swing bowlers haven't had much of a say in this IPL. Even in the PSL, swing bowlers weren't the ones making much of a difference: bowlers who steamed in and bowled short of a length were successful. Additionally, bowlers who had decent change-ups also saw a lot of success (Faulkner in PSL, Harshal in IPL).
This is why I think it is unwise to carry these fake X-factor players, they will ruin our methodology that brought a lot of success in the UAE.
Mohammad Rizwan and Babar Azam opening will enable us to get off to consistent starts without losing wickets. Both of them have demonstrated the capacity to assume roles; if we are say 50-0 after 7 overs, one of them usually plays as the aggressor to get the tempo back and maximize the runs. Rizwan's rotation of strike means that he is almost always going to be the person who hangs around till the end. Babar can read slower balls and does fairly well against spinners, so he will probably need to take the role of the aggressor. In case of a collapse against some high-quality seam bowling, we have a long middle-order capable of adjusting and assuming responsibility.
A bowling attack of Zahid Mahmood, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Imad Wasim, Imran Khan Sr. and Wahab Riaz/Shahnawaz Dahani provides us a lot of depth.
With the part-time spin options of Malik and Iftikhar, perhaps the need for Imad might not be needed on some occasions, hence someone like Aamir Yamin can be slotted in to give some more lower-order firepower.
A lot of options available, let's hope our selectors pick the best.
