With just a few matches left, you can’t afford to continue to randomly select your Dream11 teams and hope you’ll somehow win and make crores. You need to get strategic, and work hard on finding the dream team. Remember, there are no short-cuts to success. You need to earn your money, it isn’t a gamble. Spend some time on reading this blog and hopefully, you’ll develop the right mindset that’s required for building your dream team. Following are a few things that you need to keep in mind:
Selecting the Captain for your Dream 11 team: This is the most important aspect of whether you are going to be a contender for the top spot. Hardly anyone’s made it to top 10 without having the #1 point scorer as their captain. The points earned by the player simply get doubled when you appoint that player as a captain. The top performing player would generally score anywhere between 80-130 points, and as a captain, would add 160-260 points (generally almost 30-40% of the total points of any team). This means, if you miss finding the right captain, you need to find another player or players who can compensate for those lost points, which is generally impossible.
Selecting the Vice-captain: This is where it can be a bit tricky. Getting your captain and vice-captain combination right is crucial, however, there could be 2-3 players that could contribute similarly to the overall points. A Vice captain should ideally give you at least 100-150 points (after multiplication by a factor of 1.5) for you to have a chance at the top spot.
Finding the smaller contributors and accounting for failures: A winning team generally excludes any players who score less than 25-30 points. For instance, selecting an opener who only bats and isn’t a good fielder, or an allrounder, has a high risk, but also a high potential reward. The openers get the maximum chance at scoring big runs because they get 20 overs. However, if they get out cheaply, they might end up giving you less than 10 points and denting your hopes for winning completely. Example, Rohit Sharma or R Gaikwad could give you 250 points, but also end up with 10 points if they get out during power plays. So, find players who have multiple ways of scoring points – Batting, bowling, fielding, wicket-keeping.
Betting on unexpected game changers: Most people end up selecting the usual suspects, the players who are in form or are known to hit big. If you are able to identify players whom most people thing won’t contribute, you are already ahead of the majority. For instance, Rahul Tewatia turned out to be a surprise, so did R Gaikwad. Had you selected them as captain or vice-captain in the right matches, you would have definitely been among the top 1 percentile.
Hedge your risks: Depending on how many teams you are able to afford, the more scenarios you are able to cover, the better would be your chances. For example, selecting different pairs of captain and vice captain for different teams with small variations. Betting on bowlers vs all-rounders vs six hitters vs consistent players. Different teams can hedge your risks and hopefully, help you find a combination that’ll work. Also, think about different scenarios like assuming a high scoring match vs a low scoring match.
Know the game – The ground, the pitch, past matches and the players’ strengths: This is the most important aspect of making your team for different matches. There are so many factors you need to keep in mind. For instance, is the match happening in Dubai, Sharjah or Abu Dhabi? If it’s happening in Sharjah, it has short boundaries, so six hitters have a greater chance, and bowlers might be taken for a pounding. Also, in the past matches, mostly pacers have taken wickets on this pitch. However, as the tournament has progressed, the pitch has become slower and games are starting to become low scoring. So, selecting spin bowlers or all-rounders might give you an advantage along with lower order batsmen. For example, in RCB vs SRH, people who selected Jason Holder and Yujvendra Chahal would have done well.
Spend time on creating your teams: Don’t simply select your team 25 minutes before the start of the match, you need to start thinking and working on in a day in advance. Make an excel sheet with your team combinations and note down all the different factors that could influence different players’ performance. Make your teams at least 2-3 hours prior to the match start time. After the toss and declaration of the playing 11 for both teams, be diligent about making changes based on this new information in the 25 minutes before the match. The slots get filled within the 20 minutes after the toss, so ensure that you have enrolled your teams in the contests.
Know the Dream11 point Scoring rules: If you don’t know the rules then you are just shooting in the dark. You should know how bonus system works, how many points does a wicket or a catch give you and what are the penalties. For example, a bowler needs to take 3 wickets to get 75 points, where as a batsman needs to score just about 60 runs with a few boundaries. In this tournament, lot more batsmen have hit 60s runs vs bowlers who’ve taken 3 wickets. So, selecting a pure bowler as a captain is quite risky. Here are some dream 11 IPL rules you should know:
Stump or direct run out = +12 points, if you are involved in effecting a run out, both players get 6 points each
Catch = +8 points
For economy rate of more than 11 = minus 6 points
Strike rate of 60-70 = -2 points
No points for super over
Don’t gamble, don’t get desperate, don’t get stressed and limit your spend: You are playing to have fun, not to get rich. There are millions of people playing to get that 1 crore, but only a handful will succeed. If you have worked hard, and played fairly, that’s all you can do. Limit the total amount you’ll spend on Dream 11 and in no case, play a single more contest beyond that limit, otherwise you are going to feel as guilty as a gambler.
Here are few ways you can structure you excel sheets for different matches. First, just note down the players and then different combinations for captain and VC. Feel free to copy and paste these into your own excel sheet.
Excel sheet for IPL Dream 11 Team selection
Factors
Small Ground, more sixes, team batting first wins, higher order batsmen of team 1, lower order of team 2, six hitters
