Supercoach BBL Final Word: Round 3 captains, PODs, weather watch

Supercoach Big Bash round 3 is just around the corner, and it’s been a mixed start to the season for most.

Between weather concerns, injuries and underperforming guns it’s certainly made for an interesting start to the season.

We’re approaching the stage where coaches should seriously be considering pulling the trigger on a first trade boost of the season, allowing you to make four trades for the week.

It’s a great opportunity to target the two teams on the double this week, while also chasing players set for big cash rises with strong roles.

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Further, there’s been a number of quality players that have lit up early that look like appealing buys this week despite having no foreseeable double game rounds on the horizon, such as Jack Wildermuth and Jack Edwards.

It’s not been a fantastic start for the Cooma Stallions so far, scoring just 1,169 points to sit in 7,500^th overall which is very much underwhelming.

My Nathan McSweeney POD play backfired having injured himself and missed a game of the double, and not batting in the game he featured in, while I opted for Dan Sams over Shadab Khan as skipper which also was a misfire.

We keep the chin up and try to rectify the slow start leading into round 3 where I’m well set for double game week players, hopefully they can perform (I’m looking at you Mitchy Owen…)

Let’s take a look at the Final Word ahead of Supercoach BBL round 3.

Weather watch

All weather is courtesy of the Bureau of Meteorology as of Friday, 3PM. Forecasts are subject to change.

Verdict: Nothing major to stress about, thankfully!

Looking ahead

The Melbourne Stars have the round 3 double, followed with a bye, and then another double in round 5.

The Perth Scorchers are on the double in round 4 and are very much on the radar this week, especially for those who are well prepared for the double this week.

A word of warning, if you overload on Stars players and have any non-active players (such as Will Salzmann or Alex Carey), you risk running short on numbers next week so do the numbers and make sure you have a full team on deck.

Breakevens

Each week we’ll list the top players with both the highest and lowest breakevens, plus a few additional players worth noting, to help track your cash movement.

The breakeven number is the score required in the upcoming round for a player to make or lose money.

Lowest breakeven (Money-makers)

Jack Wildermuth -108

Jack Edwards -80

Josh Philippe -48

Matt Renshaw -43

Tim Seifert -33

Joel Davies -33

Finn Allen -32

Sam Billings -29

Ollie Peake -16

Matt Gilkes -15

Sam Harper -11

Luke Wood -10

Nathan McAndrew -3

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Highest breakeven (Likely price drop)

Note the breakevens for the players on the double game round are scores for the two games.

Glenn Maxwell 188

Mitch Owen 163

Marcus Stoinis 137

David Warner 134

Jimmy Peirson 115

Chris Green 110

Peter Siddle 104

Joel Paris 104

Colin Munro 102

Tim David 102

Beau Webster 99

Mitch Marsh 99

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Super PODs

In the Final Word, we’ll look at the super POD options, the players at under 10% ownership (among the top 10% ranked coaches once rankings roll in) that could send you soaring (or falling) up the overall ranks.

They come with big risk, but the reward is immense if it comes off.

Last week, Nathan McSweeney was injured attempting to take a catch and didn’t bat, then missed game two of the double due to the injury, good one Tim… The bargain priced Matt Kuhnemann scored just 49 on the double which was a little disappointing despite the low price.

Riley Meredith – $94,500 – 10.8% ownership

Meredith has disappointed early on, averaging just 14 points across three games to sit with a breakeven of 80 for the double game week.

The poor start will keep people away, but the reality is he’s a key bowler for the Hurricanes that bowls death overs and could snare wickets at any point.

He’s fairly affordable and could erupt on the double.

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Captains

The Stars play in game one making them the vice-captaincy play for the week.

There’s a number of great options including Marcus Stoinis, Glenn Maxwell and Tom Curran.

It’s very hard to predict the roles of each player in this team as they chop and change batting order and bowling roles.

Maxwell has batted up and down the order and bowled two and three overs so far, but that could be zero on any given week.

Stoinis has batted at four and five so far and bowled two and three overs, he has bowled at the death though which is key.

For that reason, I think Stoinis is narrowly the safer play with the benefit of bowling at the death.

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The Hurricanes play game two on the double making them the major captaincy plays.

Chris Jordan, Mitch Owen and Nathan Ellis look the plays to me.

Owen could tee off at any point, but he’s started the tournament slow and has only bowled one over across the two games meaning the role isn’t as good as last year.

He’s the high-risk, high-reward play, but I am personally a little scarred from the output so far.

Jordan is the in-form player off a bag of wickets, and bats one higher than Ellis, however I do prefer the fact that Ellis is guaranteed his four overs and bowls at the death.

There’s very little between all three, but I’m leaning towards Ellis as skipper.