Global T20 Canada: All you need to know about Winnipeg Hawks

General Overview

Led by Dwayne Bravo and coached by Waqar Younis, Hawks are one of the franchises to have gone for a good mix of overseas and domestic international players. While they recruited Australia's best T20 batsman to open the innings for them, they did not neglect the real purpose of the league and have some strong Canadian representation in their side, with the inclusion of Rizwan Cheema and Hiral Patel, both of them have taken the field for their country in World Cup fixtures.

One part that stands out in their side is experience, all the players, internationally capped or uncapped, have had a taste of franchise cricket at the very least and hence will be well accommodated to the occasion.

Coach and captain, both leading death overs bowlers of their respective generations will team up to form a curious unit. It will be notable how Bravo functions under him, given how both of them tend to operate in ways that are entirely polar, in terms of skills as well as temperamental aspects.

A lot of overseas players in the side are the ones recently dropped out of favour with the national selectors and will unabashedly look to utilize this stage as a platform for both personal improvements, as well as making a statement for inclusion in their respective countries’ sides, for instance, the likes of Miller, Bravo and Simmons.

Bravo as captain, struggled in his stints for the Windies but has excelled in the CPL, clearly a sign of comfort with the format and contextual circumstances. After some impressive hauls with the bat in this year’s IPL (Bumrah and Mustafizur aren’t forgetting that anytime soon), he might also want to give himself more of a chance as a batsman after spending quite a few years in the arbitrarily defined role of a batting all-rounder.

Team Schedule

Squad

The Hawks are led by Caribbean T20 great, Dwayne Bravo

Dwayne Bravo (c)

David Miller

David Warner

Lendl Simmons

Darren Bravo

Fidel Edwards

Rayad Emrit

Ben McDermott

Ali Khan

Hamza Tariq

Junaid Siddiqui

Tion Webster

Rizwan Cheema

Hiral Patel

Mark Deyal

Kyle Phillip

Strengths

The Hawks pack a powerful batting line-up and will be looking to make that their very asset in the course of the tournament. David Warner, as proven as any batsman in the format, will be driven to put up runs on the board, especially after the particularly difficult circumstances Cricket Australia closed their doors on him for a year, and perhaps more. But strong performances could warrant him a selection in an otherwise struggling national side.

Warner's belligerence will be matched by Hobart's up and coming hard-hitting batsman Ben McDermott who has often put up exhibitions in the Big Bash League. Often we see T20 sides stacked with out-and-out hitters struggling on the peak occasions, for those scenarios, the Hawks have damage control in form of the street-smart David Miller and the technically stoic Darren Bravo, who is not only stylish but possesses a remarkable flair for stroke-making.

However, the most crucial element will be Lendl Simmons, who is one of the most complete players in the format, and mightily underrated.

Weaknesses

Royal Challengers Bangalore in the days of the Kohli-AB-Gayle trifecta, Melbourne Stars for the better part of the BBL history and now the Winnipeg Hawks, one thing is certain, whenever a team banks on batting resources, they inevitably miss out on bowling prowess.

Their bowling core is formed by the trio of Dwayne Bravo, who is seeming to be a less effective bowler of late, with batsmen finding out his once canny variations. Next up is Fidel Edwards, who neither is economical nor a strike bowler as shown by his economy of 8.28 and strike of 22.5 in T20Is. Ryad Emrit, similarly, after good CPL stints, has been under-fire, mostly because of his one-dimensional lengths and the lack of good pace to make up for it.

Hence with an unimpressive bowling unit, Hawks might struggle on the smaller boundaries of the Maple Cricket Club.

Prediction for the season

A decent batting line-up will easily see the Winnipeg based side do well in the first two rounds. With a lot of top-order batsmen, getting their sequence right would be one challenge, but if they overcome that, they are most likely to do well more often than not.

A playoffs berth likely to be achieved, the Hawks might struggle after that. It is the bowling that wins the crunch games and revolving your entire strategy around chasing to facilitate the strengths can often put the batsmen under pressure. Other than Dwayne Bravo and David Warner, they do not have other notable big match players to boast of.