How many hours of footage would you have studied, uh, and gone through? What does that preparation involve?

Yeah, plenty of preparation, um, is the simple answer.

Really, it sort of starts probably a few months out from the auction when we start talking about there's obviously this season we had the opportunity for direct signings and retentions, and there's a wild card as well.

So four players could be sort of signed pre-auction with the addition of a wild card, and that conversation was something that started, yeah, I can't really remember now, but I, I imagine the, the WhatsApp group with myself, Moods, Phil, and Fozzie would have probably kicked into gear at some point, um, in around June, I'm guessing.

Um, and we probably had back and forth on there for a few weeks.

Then as you get nearer to the auction itself, so when was the auction? It was in sort of early October.

For most of September, that prep sort of ramped up.

Uh, did you have a maximum figure for each category?

yeah phil's just gone off to an escape room and i think there's got to be a gap in the market for someone to do an events thing for the cricket nerds just your mock auctions potentially a small gap in the very small back in the market granted um one thing i'm fascinated by so when when you're having a bidding call a bidding war and we'll go up to james coles in particular later on what are you guys discussing on the table because when the camera pans to you there's whisperings going on so what what what is dk whispering to andy what's he what's he whispering to mo etc so so

It's funny you say that because we often look at other teams in the IPO and get a little bit frustrated actually that they're chatting.

It's like, why are you chatting? You know what figure you've got.

Sometimes there is an element of like, theater is the wrong word because that sounds like you're playing to the camera.

Some owners maybe do do that.

But there is an element of auction tactics around you maybe sometimes want to make them think, Are they close to their limit now? We think we've got them on the ropes here and other times.

And, and, and I think we've, we've done this a little bit in the IPL.

Why is there so much excitement around him?

What, what does an ideal T20 outfit look like for you?

I'll try...

So it's a good question, and I'll try and answer it in a relatively succinct way.

I mean, I think probably one of the, one of the things that stands out in the last few years in particular has been the sort of emphasis on, and we'll probably touch on this when we talk about the T20 World Cup, has been the way that batting has been transformed.

So for me, a, a big focus of, of compiling a team would be making sure you've got a batting order full of dynamic, aggressive players and probably quite a deep batting order.

So you want to be able to bat down to eight, nine, 10.

You know, looking at some of the teams that England are naming lately, they're batting all the way to 11, and I think that, that, that's important because it enables players to play with the freedom.

I, I mean, what do you think, what needed changing at RCB to get it over that final hurdle? And what do you think makes Andy Flower a serial winner as coach from what you see behind the scenes?