My Fantasy Inter-District League team

Veterans League

Round 2 of the Rose Bowl was postponed yesterday (Thursday) so I had some unexpected free time, and instead of battling for a place in the Finals Day line-up I am looking at my Fantasy Inter-District League team to play in the last match of the 2026 season.

Earlier this week I reported on the latest round of matches in the Veterans Inter-District League and in particular on the 28-28 draw of the Huddersfield team with their Aire & Wharfe counterparts. At that end of that report, I said that I thought I could make a better selection of the two teams. I said that I would share my selection of the Home and Away teams for the final fixture of the season against Bradford on Friday 4 September. That was a moment of madness I may regret, but my word is my bond, so here, just for fun, are my Fantasy teams for this Inter-District finale.

I didn't start from scratch as I am using the bowlers picked by the two team captains and just shuffled them around a bit. The crux of my belief is that it is time to change the format of the teams as was well documented last year when conducting my post mortem of the 2025 season. This approach would work towards selecting the best 8 bowlers to play in the away team for all the reasons outlined in that posting. I strongly believe that I presented a reasonable case for changing the continuing practice of the two teams being selected as two entirely different entities when the only result that matters is the joint scores of the home and away teams. The Huddersfield team currently sits 4th in the table with one match left to play and that is against the third-placed team, Bradford.

I really believed then, and still do now, that it is time to change the selection process to halt the freefall of the team down the Inter-District League table. The team could still finish 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th or even 7th in the table. The team has never finished lower than 4th in the final table since records began. In fact, Huddersfield was a serial winner of the title for many years. At present, the team is on a run of finishing 4th for the past two seasons and this year it could get a lot worse.

To continue to just use the same selection process will only continue to produce the same outcome. As Albert Einstein (1879-1955) famously said; "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." 

Another clever man was Henry Ford (1863-1947) who invented the first-ever car assembly line for the Ford cars, which kept him ahead of his rivals and made him a very rich man. He offered a similar sensible analysis with this quote "If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you always got." Two very clever men whom I am pleased to quote to promote my view that the current team selection process is flawed and due an overhaul.

I set about gathering some information to help me form my Fantasy League team. Let's start with this season's individual Huddersfield bowler records from the matches played so far in the Inter-District League.

I have taken the 4 bowlers that have the best win records from this year's home team and put them alongside the top 4 performing Away team bowlers. Then do the same for the remaining bowlers from the Home and Away teams. Add into the mix the Veterans League records for this season for all the bowlers. These records all offer a running order based on the 'Aggregate Difference'. I happen to think that Wins is a more sensible figure to factor into the thinking as Wins means points which is the most important number in the complex Inter-District scoring system.

So I have now placed the top 8 bowlers forming the Away team as per my post-mortem report. I have taken the Top 4 bowlers from the current Home team along with the Top 4 bowlers from the Away team to form the basis of the strongest new Away team.

TWEAKS

This is where I step aside from the records, form and sensible reasoning to dip into personal changes and use the little-used Tweak facility to shuffle the team selection a little more and I make two changes.

Tweak 1:

I have looked at the 8 names carried forward from the new Away team and see if any information from the Veterans League records highlights any reason to change. There I note that Robert Spencer bowls in Division 3 for Linthwaite Hall. He has a good Inter-District record winning 4 of his 6 games to date. However right behind him in the ID averages is the Home team captain Graham Sigsworth who has the same 4-game winning record but from one less game played. These two factors mean that I move Graham one place up in the pecking order and he joins the top four Home team bowlers and as a consequence, is elevated into the new Away team. (Are you all still with me?). Sorry Robert, but you are still in the Home team.

Tweak 2: I am left with bowlers 5 to 8 from each of the current Home and Away teams. I review all 8 to see if I need to tweak anything. Tim Poulter is a very experienced Inter-District bowler and has finished each of the last four seasons in the top two of the Huddersfield Away team's records. I am tempted to swap him with Steve Mallinson. Steve is in his second season in the competition and I think we are asking too much of him by putting him in the Away team and he may be benefit by playing some matches on a Huddersfield green. That is my reasoning and let me assure you that it has nothing to do with buttering up Tim, who is my Rose Bowl Round 2 opponent. So that is what I decided to do, swap Steve and Tim.

These steps have left the two team captains in the same Away team based on their playing records, not captaincy records. Captains pick the teams and the home green. Well, I've picked the teams and as long as it isn't Lockwood Con I don't care what green it is so no need to nominate a captain. All that leaves my two teams looking like this: AWAY TEAM: (From the former Home team) Andrew Wike, Martin Skuse, Robert Dickinson and Graham Sigsworth. (From the former Away team) Garry Senior, Andy Lumb, Malcolm Gilbert and Tim Poulter.

HOME TEAM:

(From the former Home team) Robert Spencer, Mick Chapman, Ray Whitwam and Peter Fuller. (From the former Away team) Steve Mallinson, Edwin Haigh, David Pollard and Derek Hewitt.

Job done. Pick the bones out of that. I have supported the captains' team selections already made but just shuffled them around a little. Nothing very controversial. There is only one way to prove me wrong, of course. That is never going to happen, so it will remain a Fantasy League team. Did I mention that I am in the last 16 of the Rose Bowl?