White Ball World Cup

PREAMBLE Many of you who have known me for a few years will know I have never been a great fan of instant one-day cricket, pyjama cricket as I call it. So, surprise surprise, a new simulation all about the 50-overs format. Maybe I’m getting mellow, maybe it's just that I watched it more or less solidly for six weeks or so, and just got hooked !
So this is the simulation that was never going to happen from us, born out of the euphoria of England’s triumph (you can’t really let England as World Champions just slide away, it’s a rare event) Although I have to say I was working on the game engine after the first couple of weeks, long before that epic final at Lords. And how unlucky were the Kiwis, losing out after the Gods had twice conspired to make this match a tie, only to be foiled by a bizarre countback rule? What ‘WBWC’ can’t guarantee is the drama of that final match, that was in many ways unreal.
So, nuts and bolts. This is a new game engine that attempts to recreate the feel of this format of cricket in the context of this particular World Cup competition. All matches are played using the 50-overs format. Both batting and bowling teams have one Review per innings, when used it is lost if the Review is unsuccessful, but not lost of if the decision goes their way. The rules of the competition (the different Power Plays especially) force Captains to go down certain decision pathways, and in doing so identify some great new stars, batsmen, bowlers, wicket-keepers, captains and, probably most important of all, fieldsmen.
Of course all ten 15-player squads are included in the game. We don’t provide individual Player Cards but you do get individual Player Ratings, both for batting and bowling. More of that in the Rules proper. Matches are played by-by-ball but an over normally takes no more than a minute or so, so a match can be completed in around two hours. We have aimed to reproduce the differences in the three different Power Play periods (PP1 1-10 overs, PP2 11-40, PP3 41-50), with the different fielder placement restrictions in each one.
You will be the judge of whether we’ve got it right or not.