Cricket Leagues for Dummies (and new members)

Aislabie

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In the last couple of months, we've seen something of an exodus from the Cricket Leagues section, which has meant that the newer members have little in the way of an example to follow. That's why I urge you all to come and take a read of this thread, in the hope that you find it interesting and useful.

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Managing a League

The things that matter:
  • Good grammar and language: It's difficult to over-state how important this is. If you take the time to proof-read what you post, and to articulate things clearly, your league will run far more smoothly. You may want to send what you've written to a more experienced manager for some feedback. If you ignore this step, it can lead to confusion and misunderstandings that will not help your league to be a success.
  • Being a familiar face: If you want experienced managers to take part in your leagues, it helps to be one yourself. Most members who create leagues before familiarising themselves with the sections simply won't get enough managers. This is partly because they don't know you, and partly because your league will fall foul of other issues. It's as simple as that.
  • One thing at a time: If you want to run two leagues at once, don't. I've tried it before, and although I just about managed, neither league really got the time it deserved. Some other members have managed to pull it off, but it is not sustainable. Far better to have one good league than two crap ones.
  • Stick at it: If you're changing leagues every two days, then the members of the forum will lose patience very quickly. If I sign up to a Kiwi Premier League, and two days later it turns into a Tri-Nations Tournament, then I'm unlikely to sign up for the new league.
  • Make it presentable: A good league will always be tidy and organised. Good examples of this are my European league, and VC's CWG competition. If I open up a new league, and the index page is all in 24-point bold capitals, then I'm going to be killing that browsing tab with fire.
  • Choose the right sim for you: It will depend on what kind of league you're running as to which simulator you use. Most common are Cricket Heroes (which provides accurate results, but costs money), Syedur Rahman's Cricksim (which will produce good results with the right input values), and PCCS (which is a free T20 simulator). Also make sure that you learn how to use a sim before you start the league.
  • Get your own idea: The best leagues always have a good idea behind them. The best exponent of this is VC, whose leagues include the Commonwealth Games, World Cup Rewind, and PlanetCricket Ashes. However, you don't have to be as creative as that - in its hayday, this forum had Premier Leagues from different countries (Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and more) that made up the majority of what went on. Duplicate leagues are rarely successful.
Things that don't:
  • Graphics: So you might be really keen to get all of the best graphics from around the forum and putting them into your league, but at the end of the day, that's just window-dressing. As I said earlier, as long as you're organised, it won't actually matter if you have little or nothing in the way of graphics. For instance, my PCFTP league built up a following without any graphics, and my recent projects [1] [2] had nothing more than a simple logo I made in PowerPoint in five minutes.
  • Size: While you might think it's a good idea to start up a 20-team league, I can tell you that it probably isn't. When I tried, it ended in failure, and I've only ever seen two managers do it successfully - @VC the slogger and @Iridium. You would be far better off to create a smaller league. One of my more popular leagues contained only three teams at a time.
  • Fitting in: Don't start a league here just because all the cool kids are doing it - do it because you have an idea that you genuinely want to pursue. Most of the good leagues in this section are something that the league manager would actually like to see happen - like @CG123 wanting a NZPL, like @VC the slogger wanting cricket in the Commonwealth Games, and like all of us wanting to play cricket at the best level possible.
How to do it:
How not to do it:
  • It would be harsh (but easy) to pick out a league currently running for this section, but to be tactful I'll pick out a slightly older league. The manager of that league has learnt a lot since then, but would have been better to learn before he tried to run a league.
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Participating in a League

Things that matter:

  • Punctuality: It's extremely important that you post your line-ups if you're a part of a league. Without them, the league manager will feel unappreciated and probably lose interest in managing the league.
  • Grammar: It's not as important as when you're managing the league, but please try not to post "Yay My Teem Won U Are All Rubbis I m The Besst" after your team won. Something with a little more thought behind it is lovely.
  • Research: If you don't know who your players are, research them! Aside from a couple of Croatians in my European league, everyone you could ever be looking for is on Cricket Archive, and most are on Cricinfo.
  • Patience: Rumour has it that league managers have lives, too. Sometimes, they won't be able to get things done immediately, and nagging them rarely helps things happen any faster.

Things that don't:

  • One-upmanship: Getting one over on someone else is the saddest reason possible for taking part in a league. If that's why you're taking part in one, take a good look at your priorities.
  • Winning: Of course winning is nice, but sometimes there's more to it than that. For instance, I wouldn't have chosen to manage Kenya in the CWG if I wanted to win it. If you're a part of a good league, then there might be the opportunity to learn things and befriend people just as much as there is a chance of victory.

How to do it:


How not to do it:

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Resources for League Managers


Simulators:

  • Syedur Rahman's Cricksim: A tried and tested simulator that can run both Test and Limited Overs fixtures. Very user-friendly and extremely realistic with the right input values, it is the most popular choice on the forum. If you have a version of Windows newer than Vista, you will need to know how to use DOSBox as well, but that's a simple enough process. For help rating players, check these posts for beginners' guides to Test ratings and Limited Overs ratings.
  • Cricket Heroes: The Rolls Royce of forum simulators, Cricket Heroes is the obvious choice for running a league.
  • Planet Cricket Cricket Simulator: A free Twenty20 simulator that produces visually impressive scorecards, it has a somewhat limited match engine due to it only being part-completed before development was abandoned.
  • CW Sim: Not often used, but with the potential to be very useful, the CW Sim appears to be a further developed version of PCCS. The commentary text can be copied into a text file, but this must be done while the simulation screen is still open.
  • Digisims: The big brother to Cricket Heroes & official simulator for PCPL. Online Cricket Simulator.Formats: T20/ODI/Test. Popular features include, live match streaming, Fantasy cricket, Online player auctions to name a few.

Images:

  • Zimbio: An excellent site for high-quality player images, this is my preferred option when I'm looking for images to use in my leagues.
  • Flickr: A photo-sharing website with some excellent cricket photos amongst all the trains and planes.
  • Google: Remember that if all else fails, Google is your friend. Also, watch this, this and this.
  • PicResize: Sometimes, your pictures might be the wrong size. Not for long!
  • Overlays: If you want to give your pictures that extra X-factor, add an overlay. Definitely not essential.

Information:

  • CricketArchive: The biggest cricket database on the internet. Bar nothing.
  • Cricinfo: The number one cricket site on tinternet. It's good for statistics, information and images.
  • Wikipedia: This article you're looking for is probably a stub, and you could probably help by expanding it. Worth a look, though.

Admin:

  • Fixture generators: If you don't have the spare time to work out all of your fixtures by hand, then you could try BlueBones or the Fixture List Generator
  • PC Tournament Fixture generator
  • Net Run Rate: This helpful spreadsheet has everything you need to calculate Net Run Rate. If you don't fancy using Excel, then you could use this simple calculator to calculate the value for an individual match. It has an irritating jingle, so be warned. Also, if a team is bowled out, then make sure to enter their full quota of overs.
  • Averages: Hscripts have a simple averages calculator, but if you can't use Excel or a calculator, I recommend that you don't bother with them.
  • Player Rankings Calculator: I created some formulae that create batting and bowling rankings. These formulae can be applied to all formats. To use, simply download the spreadsheet provided. PM me with any questions.
  • Complete player rating guide for new members: A detailed guide in rating players for leagues. Rating Guide For Cricket Simulators (Cricsim), Player Ratings 'Rough' Guide For Cricket Heroes and CS09/CS15 RATINGS GUIDE.
  • Cricket Stats Generator: A computer application (by @Yash.) that helps the user to generate stats by importing the scorecard file of the matches simulated through Syedur Rehman CricSim.
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Hopefully this guide is useful to you all. If anyone thinks there's anything I've missed, post it and I'll add it in. This might be worth sticky-ing.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Ahmad94

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Sticky Sticky Sticky!!! :)

Good one mate. Needed an article like this for the newer members.
 

IceAgeComing

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Even as someone who doesn't do the whole league thing; I can tell that this is a very good and useful thread.

e: can I add one other thing from a mod perspective? Please don't mention-spam when starting a league; not only is it very annoying to those that you are spamming that probably don't want to join your league, but its also against the forum rules and something that you can be infracted for.
 
Last edited:

VC the slogger

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Wonderfully written. Reading it helped me learn a thing or two.

Also, could an anti-text speech rule be introduced just for league managers in their respective threads? Won't name any, but a few of the newer guys have been using it in their index, match posts which is quite annoying to see.
 

IceAgeComing

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Also, could an anti-text speech rule be introduced just for league managers in their respective threads? Won't name any, but a few of the newer guys have been using it in their index, match posts which is quite annoying to see.

There already is a forums-wide rule against text-speech. If its bad; then please feel free to report it and someone will come and check it out.
 

Umair7

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  • Patience: Rumour has it that league managers have lives, too. Sometimes, they won't be able to get things done immediately, and nagging them rarely helps things happen any faster.
I love you for this :) !
 

Asham

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thanks now i will improve my leagues with that tips thanks
 

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