KFC SuperCoach BBL: Jock Reynolds experts Azza and Damo’s how-to play guide, tips for success

SuperCoach BBL is live! Never played before? No worries. Damo and Azza from Jock Reynolds are on board as part of KFC SuperCoach’s official team to talk you through the basics. First up, head to supercoach.com.au, and sign up. It takes all of two minutes, even quicker than placing a delivery order on the KFC app. Once you’ve signed up, you’re now officially a SuperCoach — welcome to one of the best fantasy communities there is. Catch all the ICC T20 World Cup action live & exclusive to Fox Cricket, available on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial today. You’ve got a squad to pick and a salary cap to choose it from. The aim? Score points, win matches and take on other coaches in your league — and Australia — in the bid to become the KFC SuperCoach champion for BBL11. Follow Azza (@azzajewell) and Damo (@damosc) for expert KFC SuperCoach BBL advice. ONCE YOU’VE SIGNED UP You’ve got $2 million to spend and 16 players to select. You have to select two wicketkeepers (WKP-BAT), seven batsmen (BAT or BAT-BWL or WKP-BAT) and seven bowlers (BWL or BAT-BWL). You’ll notice there are lots of players that have an dual position status — (BAT-BWL, WKP-BAT) — which means they are interchangeable between both of their allocated positions. There is also the ‘Auto Pick’ feature that helps fill out your side if you’re struggling to decide between players. Before each round, you must select 11 players to field and your remaining five players will remain on your bench. KFC SuperCoach BBL11 fixture Your bench players won’t score any points, unless you’ve nominated them as an emergency and one of your starting players don’t play. An emergency player will score in place of a player who does not play and is on your field. In the event you name two emergencies in one position, the lowest score counts. You also need to select a captain and vice-captain. Your captain’s score is doubled, and your VC score is mostly irrelevant unless your captain is a late out or isn’t selected to play. In the event your captain does not play, your VC score is doubled instead. Throughout the season, you can trade up to three players between each of the 13 rounds. PAY ATTENTION TO THE FIXTURE During the season teams can encounter a bye, or what is known in SuperCoach BBL as a double game week. In double game weeks, players representing the side playing twice have two opportunities to rack up points. This should also play into your decision for captain and vice-captain. The players representing the team that has the bye do not score and are classed as DNP (did not play). Both of these factors should help you decide who to trade in and out. After the first round, and subsequently after each round, player prices will fluctuate, much like the stock market. If a player performs below their break even (which you can find in KFC SuperCoach Plus), they will drop in price, but if they perform well, they’ll become more expensive. Domestic players that haven’t played in the BBL will start at $42,000 or $62,500, whereas most international players will start at about $125,000 unless they have featured for BBL teams before. Balancing your team based on salaries and forecasting price fluctuations is crucial to success in KFC SuperCoach and there are many tools available to help you with this. KEY THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW Premium is a term you’ll hear a lot in KFC SuperCoach and these are the players that are generally the most expensive, or have performed well in previous seasons. Players like Josh Phillipe, Daniel Sams, Glenn Maxwell and Rashid Khan are in this category and premium players are the ones you want to build your side around. Players who are selected to represent their country, domestic or abroad, will be unavailable for their BBL franchise and won’t play from that point on, or until their international duties are no longer required. Players who have been affected by this in recent summers have included Mohammad Nabi, Rashid Khan, Nathan Lyon and Liam Livingstone — in fact, most Aussie Test stars don’t feature until later in the BBL every summer. Keep your ear to the ground so you are aware of the international fixtures as they are announced — some players might only feature in the last two or three games of the season. We hear The Phantom is working on a handy guide to make this easier for coaches to navigate. HOW TO SCORE POINTS How to score batting points in KFC SuperCoach BBL How to score bowling points in KFC SuperCoach BBL How to score fielding points in KFC SuperCoach BBL TIPS FOR SUCCESS SuperCoaches that have taken part in AFL or NRL SuperCoach before will know there are a number of tactics that translate to SuperCoach BBL. THE CAPTAINCY LOOPHOLE Just like in SuperCoach AFL and NRL, you can get two attempts at the best captaincy score, by using a well known trick called the ‘captain loophole’. You start by placing the vice-captain tag on a player who is playing in the first few games of the round. Should this player score well, you place a non-playing player on your field, make them your captain, and then ensure your emergency pick is playing. The emergency score will then replace your non-playing player who will enable your vice-captain’s score to be doubled. Take this for an example: 1. Aaron Finch scores 120 as your vice-captain in the first game of a round. 2. You place a player with a bye on field and make Ben Cutting your BAT emergency. 3. Ben Cutting’s score replaces the bye player and Finch’s score is doubled. In previous seasons of SuperCoach BBL, many coaches opted to have a $42,000 rookie wicketkeeper (Lachy Pfeffer was popular in BBL10) on their bench permanently to make full use of this tactic. TRADE WISELY Trades are golden. You only have three to use between rounds and not a lot of time to make decisions which could shape your season. One tactic you can use — via the rolling lockout if you keep trades up your sleeve — is to see how your bench players perform before trading. If a bench player performs well early in a round and you’ve selected them as emergency, you might opt to trade an on-field player to a non-playing player (bye) to capitalise on your emergency player’s score. Target bye players with an upcoming double game week if you’re using this strategy to help put yourself ahead.

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KFC SuperCoach BBL: Jock Reynolds experts Azza and Damo’s how-to play guide, tips for success