And the winner is...

By Barmy Jez
November 12 2010

Well, it may have been another disappointing year on the field for the ‘Sex, but off the field there were far more valuable prizes up for grabs. So without any further hesitation, I am delighted to announce the results of this year’s player performance competition.

In a twist to previous seasons, this year the competition was run via an online prediction game known as ExtZy, where players were able to purchase shares in the players they thought would perform best over the course of the season.

In my mid-season update, I commented on the ‘Value over return strategy’, where the most popular squad members appeared to be the cheapest to purchase. This trend certainly continued throughout the second half. Indeed, nine of the ten squad members who had all 1,000 shares purchased were part of the bottom 10 based on price, whilst four of the five squad members purchased least were in the ‘top 5 most expensive’ group.

So which strategy was the best to adopt? Value or previous excellence? Well, the five most valuable players (based on profit per share), were:

• Toby Rowland Jones
• Gareth Berg
• Neil Dexter
• Dawid Malan
• Tim Murtagh

This is hardly surprising – Murtagh was the top wicket taker, whilst Malan scored the most first class runs. Dexter and Berg had great all round seasons and Toby Roland Jones was a revelation. In fact, he was incredibly undervalued after having no first class stats to compare with at the beginning of the season. Well done to all of you that believed in his potential! However, whilst he was one of the cheapest players, the others were all fairly expensive and had a solid history of first class success. The lesson is clearly that looks (and prices) can be deceiving – and it doesn’t always pay to buy cheap!

Anyway, enough of my cheap (and almost certainly boring) analysis – I’m sure you’re all dying to know the results! Nobody purchased shares in all five of the most profitable players – or even four of them. Three of you purchased shares in three of them and whilst two featured mid-table, it was Elvie Sissie who really prospered by purchasing 200 shares in Toby Roland Jones, whereas the other two didn’t have any faith in the little known bowler. I also have to give a special mention to my kiwi buddy Simon Strez, who was the only player not to make a single ounce of profit on this game. Being a loyal countryman, he invested almost all his allowance into Iain O’Brien, whose time on the sidelines left him as a very expensive and non-profitable purchase. Simon, on behalf of all Middlesex fans, I can safely say that you only get disappointed when backing your own team!

For those of you that want the full standings, here they are:

1 Elvie Sissie
2 Mark Rampaprice
3 Joel Mitchell
4 Monty Christo
5 Hippity The Green Bunny
6 John Hande
7 Ian Harris
8 Sarah Horne nee Freeman
9 Ewe Phoric
10 Ged Ladd
11 Nicola Wills
12 Jeremy Horne
13 Alan Routley
14 Bananarama Monkey Face
15 Noel Coward
16 Agony Aunt
17 Mark Yeandle
18 Simoney Girard
19 Ben Morris
20 Harry Oppenhyper
21 Simon Strez

All that’s left for me to say is thank you for playing and hope to see you all again next year. Now I’m out of here before my wife spots that she’s finished ahead of me…