VC the slogger
PlanetCricket Forever
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2010
Legends At Battle: 2020 edition
This league is a spin-off of Legends At Battle, with a theme loosely based on the happenings of the year 2020 that has proved eventful so far to say the least with some new calamity or the other cropping up with every passing month. There's literally no telling what's about to happen next; my own personal experiences thus far have included jumping over a fire at the start of the year, losing an extremely close work associate, almost being run over by a taxi whilst crossing the street, badly injuring my ankle whilst training to the point where I couldn't walk without a crutch, then recovering against all odds to achieve my best ever fitness levels yet (even better than my coach IMO 
), even regaining a lot of my lost hair, only to have the Covid pandemic strike when I could have otherwise absolutely killed it in the dating game, then being stuck away from home at my office for three months during lockdown, having a super-cyclone hit my city during which a tin roof nearly fell on my head whilst I tried to get a peek outside, had another ceiling collapse in my workplace when I was out luckily. And that's just off the top of my head, and the year is still only half done..Similarly in this league, rather than selecting squads by themselves, managers who sign up here will simply be given 14 players at random before EVERY game to pick from. To fully understand the ramifications of this you could either end up with this guy in your team or this guy, end up with a contest like this or this.. I mean there's just no telling what card you'll be dealt and it's totally up to fate or rather random.org to be more precise. Still keen on signing up?
1) Firstly, I go to statsguru on cricinfo and set the criteria as all players to have played a Test/ODI/T201 since 1877, the year the first ever Test match was played.
2) Secondly, I include only the following teams in my query: Afghanistan, Africa XI, Asia XI, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Canada, East Africa, England, Germany (you'd be surprised at some of the players they have), Hong Kong, ICC World XI, India, Ireland, Kenya, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, Singapore (for having beaten Zimbabwe not too long ago), South Africa, Sri Lanka, UAE, USA, West Indies and Zimbabwe. For obvious reasons, I've excluded every other non-ODI team save for Germany and Singapore so as to avoid diluting the talent pool further.
3) A total of 174 pages of players appeared and I set the list in alphabetical order to mix things up further.
4) Then, I open Random.org on one tab and set the numbers between 1 to 174 for the no of pages on display. So, if the number generated is 15, I head to page 15 and make my selection from there.
5) I open Random.org again on another tab and set it to generate numbers between 1 to 8 to get one of the following player types:
1 - Specialist batsman
2 - Batting AR
3 - Pace bowler
4 - Spin bowler
5 - Pace/spin bowling AR
6 - Genuine AR
7 - Wicket-keeper
8 - Wicket-keeper batsman
If a page lacks a certain type of player I need, I simply generate a different number and look at another page for my pick.
6) Every page normally contains at least 2-3 choices of each player type, so from there it's a small matter of opening random.org in yet another tab to finalize a particular pick.
7) The three strikes rule will apply here, i.e a player who has appeared in more than 3 matches during the course of the tournament will be ruled out for the remainder of the competition. This is to ensure rotation and also so that the likes of Bradman, Richards, McGrath etc don't end up completely dominating every match.
8) If a ruled out player gets accidentally picked by random.org, you stand to gain a non-Test/ODI/T20I player as an almost like-for-like replacement. Which means the likes of Bart King, Franklyn Stephenson, Mahadevan Sathasivam, Shantanu Sugwekar, Frant Tarrant etc are definitely not out of the race.
9) Also, all matches will be in the 50-over format. So I wouldn't be too glad if I got somebody like Douglas Jardine in my XI, even though he averages an excellent 48 with the bat in Test cricket.
2) Secondly, I include only the following teams in my query: Afghanistan, Africa XI, Asia XI, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Canada, East Africa, England, Germany (you'd be surprised at some of the players they have), Hong Kong, ICC World XI, India, Ireland, Kenya, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, Singapore (for having beaten Zimbabwe not too long ago), South Africa, Sri Lanka, UAE, USA, West Indies and Zimbabwe. For obvious reasons, I've excluded every other non-ODI team save for Germany and Singapore so as to avoid diluting the talent pool further.
3) A total of 174 pages of players appeared and I set the list in alphabetical order to mix things up further.
4) Then, I open Random.org on one tab and set the numbers between 1 to 174 for the no of pages on display. So, if the number generated is 15, I head to page 15 and make my selection from there.
5) I open Random.org again on another tab and set it to generate numbers between 1 to 8 to get one of the following player types:
1 - Specialist batsman
2 - Batting AR
3 - Pace bowler
4 - Spin bowler
5 - Pace/spin bowling AR
6 - Genuine AR
7 - Wicket-keeper
8 - Wicket-keeper batsman
If a page lacks a certain type of player I need, I simply generate a different number and look at another page for my pick.
6) Every page normally contains at least 2-3 choices of each player type, so from there it's a small matter of opening random.org in yet another tab to finalize a particular pick.
7) The three strikes rule will apply here, i.e a player who has appeared in more than 3 matches during the course of the tournament will be ruled out for the remainder of the competition. This is to ensure rotation and also so that the likes of Bradman, Richards, McGrath etc don't end up completely dominating every match.
8) If a ruled out player gets accidentally picked by random.org, you stand to gain a non-Test/ODI/T20I player as an almost like-for-like replacement. Which means the likes of Bart King, Franklyn Stephenson, Mahadevan Sathasivam, Shantanu Sugwekar, Frant Tarrant etc are definitely not out of the race.
9) Also, all matches will be in the 50-over format. So I wouldn't be too glad if I got somebody like Douglas Jardine in my XI, even though he averages an excellent 48 with the bat in Test cricket.
Okay, so because of the sheer number of players I would have to enter into the sim every round, I won't be looking for more than 6-8 signups at the most. This is one of those instances where more isn't necessarily merrier.
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