Fantasy Cricket

Pakistani players arrive

Now that the Sri Lankans have finished hammering the England One Day side, it's the turn of the Pakistanis. Pakistan will play 4 tests, 1 Twenty20 and 5 ODIs, along with a couple of warmup matches (Note that their match against West Indies A will not be counted in the Fantasy Cricket competition).

If anyone wants to pick any Pakistani player, they are all now available; when you change your team scroll to the bottom of the list of batsmen/bowlers/etc. to see them. Here's a list of the players and their ratings:

2006 Competition has started

When the round of county matches started last Wednesday (3rd May), Fantasy Cricket 2006 officially started. Team entry is now closed; however I will consider late entries (with a possible point deduction) if you contact me by email.

There are still some team entries that are either duplicate entries by one person or have no valid email address - I will be tidying these up in the next day or so.

Jakers win Fantasy Cricket 2005

Congratulations to Dale and his all-conquering Jakers team who have won the 2005 competition. The Jakers ended the first day in 3rd place, were consistently in the top few teams in the first few weeks, and on July 10th (less than halfway through the season) took first place - and didn't lose first spot for a minute of the remaining 77 days.

Just about the only challenge The Jakers had was a late charge by Zindabad XI which earned a second place finish. Starting September 631 points adrift of the lead, it was quite an effort to get to within 43 points by the end.

Mostly Harmless took 3rd place, having lost 2nd place 4 days before the end, but able to fight off a final challenge by Marzipan XI and MK Dons on the final day.

The jockeying for places in the fantasy competition went right down to the wire - when Stephen Fleming took the final catch of the season at 6.40pm he scored enough points for the shevchenko team to move into 17th place, 1 point ahead of Harry who dropped to 18th place.

I hope everyone enjoyed the 2005 competition. It may not have had quite the same level of drama that the Ashes had, but it hopefully provided some amusement and an extra level of interest to your cricket watching over the Summer. Of course, Fantasy Cricket will be back in 2006 - if you've got any suggestions for alterations or improvements in the system for next year, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.

England win the Ashes

The only cricket competition more important than this fantasy cricket competition has finally been won by England. Many congratulations to Michael Vaughan and his players.

The Ashes

With the Ashes finally upon us, it's worth noting that a couple of new players have arrived for Australia, and another couple have moved to country cricket. All the Aussies (and other players) are selectable, and shown here.

Those of you who had one of your players as a 'super-sub' in the recently completed one-dayers will be glad to hear that, even if they did nothing, they still got their 4 fantasy points for appearing. It may be a silly rule, but as they get a cap, they get their points!

Finally, you may have noticed that I have added a points graph to each players page - for example check out how Steve Harmison's score has varied over the season.