With a few rounds of Super Smash cricket remaining, I've whipped together a Super Smash All Stars team. I'll come back to this once the tournament is over to see if there are any changes to be made via some dominant clutch performances in the remaining rounds and finals cricket. There are other variables that will offer some funk later on as there is a reasonable difference in number of games played for each team and things could change when these even out, plus some players from the Blackcaps Battlers T20 team will come back to Super Smash and add to their work from earlier in the tournament.

I have tried to stay clear of imports, as well as those who don't play Plunket Shield and/or Ford Trophy cricket.

Tim Seifert (wk), George Worker, Jesse Ryder, Will Young, Mark Chapman, Anton Devcich, Josh Clarkson, Andrew Ellis, Anurag Verma,  Blair Tickner, Tarun Nethula.

Aotearoa's trio of beastly young batsmen all get the nod with Seifert 1st in Super Smash runs, Chapman 2nd and Young 4th. I went into depth about why these three aren't just T20 guns and should genuinely be considered as three of the best batsmen in Aotearoa, so I'll save that yarn here; what is funky though is that Chapman and Young have played five games each while Seifert has played seven.

Worker got the other opening spot ahead of Glenn Phillips (34avg/185.45sr) as he has cored 115 runs in just two games @ 212.96sr. Obviously you can very easily roll with Phillips, or you can pick Phillips ahead of Ryder at #3 but I just like to be different. Ryder continues to dominate domestic cricket and is averaging 44.25 with a strike-rate of 158.03, scoring 177 runs in just four games.

The real observation here should be that along with those young lads, Ryder and Worker score runs in the other formats as well. All five of them aren't just scoring runs in all three formats, they are among the best and maintain their disgustingly high level of run-scoring across all the formats. That's cricketing art. 

Again, it would be very easily to select Phillips in the middle order but I want to give some low key beasts their due. Anton Devcich is 3rd in runs (seven games) and averaging 32.83 while owning a 151.53sr, which is very handy for our middle order. Stack that on top of his bowling exploits where he is the only bowler in the top-10 who is conceding less than 7rpo and that's a mandatory selection.

Devcich is also the only bowler in the top-10 who has bowled in 7inns, which helps his number of wickets (10), yet his stingey rpo is worthy of selection alone. You can counter his number of wickets, you can't counter an rpo of 6.66 in T20 cricket though.

I'm always going to side with Josh Clarkson as well and while there are a gang of options for this remaining batting spot (Phillips, Cameron Fletcher, Shawn Hicks, Darryl Mitchell, Rob O'Donnell, Rob Nicol), Clarkson's a monster. I reckon he is the best finisher in Aotearoa via 3 not-outs from 5inns, while smacking with a strike-rate of 158.33 - Fletcher and O'Donnell aren't too far behind. 

This raised a question in my boggled mind; how long until Clarkson attracts a sniff of BBL interest? 

Clarkson has been doing this for a couple of seasons now and doesn't have any Blackcaps Battlers ties, making him an ideal candidate for BBL teams. As long as he's smacking boundaries, he'll demand a geeze.

Andrew Ellis is leading all wicket-takers with 12 wickets and a decent rpo of 8.12, plus we know that he can do some batting things and he's the only notable bowler to bowl a maiden. Joining Ellis in the seam stable is Blair Tickner, who has 10w and is the only seamer in the top-10 who has conceded less than 8rpo, along with Anurag Verma (9w @ 9.18rpo).

Other bowlers in contention were Jacob Duffy, Ben Lister and Warren Barnes. This is bloody exciting when you consider that apart from the OG Ellis, the best seamers in the Super Smash are all of the younger variety and are all delightful domestic cricket soldiers.

Tickner and Verma simply have better stats, giving them the tick of approval. That folks, does offer an intriguing final stanza to Super Smash as I'm eager to see which seamer other than Ellis dominates this stretch of games, either holding their All Stars spot or demanding selection. For example; is Tickner's form sustainable or will Lister improve as he susses out Super Smash cricket?

I mean, is Ellis' form sustainable? History definitely suggests so as he does this most seasons, but I'm intrigued to see how this battle of the seamers plays out.

Tarun Nethula gets the last bowling spot thanks to his 10w in 5inns @ 15.80avg/9.29rpo, joining Devcich as a top-5 Super Smash spinner. How Nethula performs in the coming week will be crucial as he will not only have to maintain his resurgent form (after falling off the map in Plunket Shield cricket!), he will have to deal with the return of Ish Sodhi.

Sodhi played four games early, taking 6w @ 6.93rpo; he and Jeetan Patel are the only bowlers with 5+ wickets who join Devcich in the sub-7rpo group. Northern Districts have played the most games along with Otago (seven), meaning that Nethula will have more opportunities to state his case and Sodhi will have to display nek-level efficiency to get on to Nethula's heels. 

Tim Johnston could also make a late push as he has 6w @ 7.15rpo and as Johnston and Sodhi are far more economical than many of the seamers, I'll happily consider them ahead of another seamer. Unlike the Blackcaps Battlers, I select the best bowlers and don't have pre-conceived notion of how many spinners can play in one team and there's no reason why a kiwi cricket team, with kiwi spinners who learn how to bowl spin in Aotearoa can't play with three or four spinners. 

Right now, Nethula and Devcich are two of the best bowlers in Super Smash. If another spinner joins them in the top-10, then we may just have to turn the funk up to full volume and roll with the spin-gang.

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Peace and love 27.