Since I am very excited about the career mode and looking forward to playing the career of an Indian player, I was wondering if it would be possible for us to create all the competitions that make the Indian domestic season so complicated to follow:
- the Ranji Trophy, a first class competition where the 8 best teams from 3 groups of 9 make it to the quarter finals, with relegation and promotion between A, B and C between seasons (A being the highest and C the lowest).
- the Irani Trophy, a single first class game between the winners of the Ranji Trophy and a team representing the Rest of India, played at the end of the season (february)
- the Challenger Trophy, a list A competition between the top 36 Indian players, divided between India Blue (seniors), India Red (A team) and India Green (B team), played at the beginning of the first class season (october)
- the Duleep Trophy, a first class competition played between five regional teams (North, South, East, West, Central Zone) drawing players from their respective state teams
- the Deodhar Trophy, the list A counterpart to the Duleep Trophy
- the Vijay Hazare Trophy, a list A competition between the 27 state teams from the Ranji Trophy plates.
- the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, the T20 counterpart to the Vijay Hazare Trophy.
My concerns are
- the number of teams that can be included in a competition, which is limited to 16 in the Cricket Academy so far. It would be great to increase it to 27 or above in order to create the main domestic competitions.
- whether we can implement a system of relegation as in the Ranji Trophy and yet give the teams from the lower groups slots to qualify to the finals (to be fair, it's an odd system, maybe unique, to allow third-tier teams to compete in the finals at the expense of better teams)
The Irani Trophy, the Challenger Trophy, the Deodhar and the Duleep Trophy are, in my opinion, perfectly suited for a career mode since a selection to represent your zone, Rest of India or India Red, Blue or Green in the various competitions would be a wonderful way to mark your progress within the game. I don't think it would be too difficult to implement either. It would need a selection system that could be based on the season statistics. These games are a bit like All Star Games and good performances there are often noticed and can propel a player towards the national team (cf Murali Vijay last year).
Maybe Big Ant could think about implementing these elements (and making them customizable for us
to play with)?
