You can read more about the competitions and join them here

MODIFICATIONS (MODS)

Unlike two-team series, managing your mods, which let you change players and captains, ?is crucial in tournament Fantasy Cricket. You can only set your team once per match day, regardless of the number of matches that day, based on *local time* for the tournament location. Use local fixture lists to determine this, not our Fantasy Cricket dates, since ours are based on GMT, so two matches on the same day may show up as on different days on our list.

To best use your mods, first see how many “match days” there are: count up how many different days will have matches, regardless of the number of matches per day. Subtract one from this number (because the first day’s match(es) don’t cost any mods), then divide the resulting number into the total number of mods allowed. That tells you the average number of mods you can use per match day.

You don’t want to run out of mods early (which means you’ve chosen more players early, and so not the best ones available the whole tournament) nor do you want to have any mods left over at the end, as near as possible (which means you could have had more players). On the other hand, don’t use the same number of mods slavishly every match day: use more when there are better players to pick, less when there are not.

Choosing captains is another cricital use of mods. In all three WC competitions, changing a captain costs 3 mods, so each time you do that you’re losing 3 additional players you could have added. This is often well worth it, because a top player can easily score more fantasy points in a match than 3 middling players. But save your captain slots for the best players, and just hold them over till their next match instead of switching to a weaker captain.

This holds true in a similar way for all player changes: whenever you put a new player in for a new match day, in general replace the players that won’t play again for the most days. That way, the players you don’t change will play again sooner. Each time you reset your team for a new match day, be sure to look ahead at least a couple of match days to see which teams will be playing!

WHEN TO SET YOUR TEAM

Ideally you want to set your team each match day after the toss so you can know who will actually be the playing XIs. However, when there are two matches in the WC the second match will always be later, so there is no way to know who will be playing in that match when you have to set. Read the previews, check all the news you can find, and remember that everyone else will be in the same boat. And if you’re going to be busy (or sleeping!) at the time of the toss, it’s lots better to set early than to not set at all. In general, if a player is questionable for a match you can’t wait for the toss of, e.g., because of a niggle, avoid that player unless you think he or she is going to make a big difference if they play.

WHERE TO SELECT PLAYERS

In the recently introduced player categories of our Fantasy Cricket (Bastmen, WK, Bowlers, and Mixed), you will benefit by choosing carefully whom you put in the Mixed slots as opposed to the restricted slots. When it’s time to replace players, which you’ll need to do every new match day, you have a lot more flexibility changing mixed players than resticted players. This will affect not only being able to choose the set of players you want, but also being able to make adjustments if the set of players you want costs too much and you have to manipulate your team to fit within the budget. Put players in the restricted positions who you think are less likely to need to be changed.

This becomes especially important when teams play that have many expensive players. There may be times when it’s actually necessary to select a player you know will not play because they have a low cost (E or F, for example), so you can get all the other players you want most. Don’t be afraid to do that, if it gives you the best team you can select. Only a few players will be outstanding in any match–give yourself the best chance to have them on your team.

HOW TO HAVE THE MOST FUN

The ultimate reason to play fantasy cricket is to have fun. And winning is probably the most fun of all. However, we can’t all win every tournament, we can’t always be in the top tier every time. You’ll have good tournaments and bad ones, that happens to all of us. But one way you can have more fun even if you’re not among the top teams in any given competition is to play with your family and friends who love cricket too. Create a “user competiton” (just click on “User comp. – create” on the right side of the home FC page) and have your family and friends join it. That way you can always see exactly where you stand compared to each other in the competition. There’s lots of material for bragging rights and trash talk as you all participate in the fantasy cricket competition!

This book was a great labor of love to write. Unfortunately, it is an equally great labor of love to read. ?I give it 5 stars for content, illustrations, and quality of binding and paper. I give it 1 star (it would be negative if that were an option) for grammar, spelling, lack of editing and proof-reading, and horrendous lack of structure.

To go into somewhat more detail: the contents of this book are wonderful. The author was able to purchase part of an old American cricket library, and so decided, quite nobly, to write a book to share this information, along with everything else he could find out about cricket in the Americas (excluding the Caribbean, which is covered extensively in many other books). The work he put into all of this is amazing, including extensive research well beyond the materials which he purchased himself. There have been other books written on cricket in the U.S., and articles occasionally on cricket in other American countries, but nothing like this. In spite of the difficulties in reading the book, it is well worth it. There are fascinating passages (almost randomly scattered, alas) on 19th century women’s cricket, on Bart King, little known, but probably the U.S.’s best cricketer ever, and on many other fascinating topics, with hundreds of pictures and reproductions of scorecards. There is really just too much great info to try to summarize it all here.

So why the missing star? First, the book is very difficult to read. It is almost always understandable, but the author’s English idiom and grammar makes it slow to read. Most of the errors are small ones, but they still slow one down. Consider the subtitle: “History of Cricket in Americas”. Idiomatically, this would be “A History of Cricket in the Americas”. Such slips, along with typos, and confusing grammar occur on every page of text. There are clauses treated as sentences, dangling participles, incomplete sentences, and so forth on virtually every page of text. Punctuation is frequently wrong, with the absence of question marks being particularly notable. The book was self-published, and since none are credited, there must have been no editor or proof reader. If the author puts out a second edition–or a second volume–I hope he will invest in those two critical aids to a good book, to go along with the already great illustrations, binding, and paper.

The other aspect of this book that makes it hard to read is that there is no logical structure to the book. Chapters are added willy-nilly, with little thought to either subject matter or chronology. Within each chapter, you never know if the next paragraph will have any relationship to the one that preceded it. This is where an editor would really have helped. To give just one example, what is probably the most famous event in American cricket–when Babe Ruth and Don Bradman met in New York in 1932–is mentioned only in the one chapter on Canadian cricket, not in any of the 10 chapters on American cricket.And this is the second chapter of the book, well out of chronological order.

There are many problems with the referencing in the book, but I mention them only in passing. Many footnotes are ambiguous, some incomprehensible. Sometimes the footnotes are added to the text, but mostly they are at the end of the book. Some fascinating details are not given a source at all. For example, on p. 217, the author tells us that Haverford College cancelled a match against the ‘West Indians’ when they learned the team might include a black player. This is a significant anecdote for both American and Caribbean cricket, but we are given no authority for the story, which pretty much makes it meaningless.

One note?? on the other countries covered in this book: the information on U.S. and Canadian cricket is compiled by the author, and takes up almost all of the book. However, a couple of chapters at the end cover Mexico, and a variety of Central and South American countries (and the Cricket Hall of Fame). Most all of the info??rmation for these sections comes from a Cricket Association member of the relevant country. Some the author rewrites, with a few footnotes, some are copied from and credited to the original writer, with no footnotes. They bring together a lot of fascinating information, but they are not at all comprehensive the way the chapters on the U.S. are.

In summary, if you love cricket, and especially if you live in the U.S., you really should read this book. It may not be easy, but it’s worth it.