Had a look at the next couple of months for cricket fixtures and see the ICC T20 World Cup starts in India on March 15th. 10 teams involved with two groups of 5 for the preliminary phase leading to the top two from each group advancing to the semi finals in last part of March and the final on April 3rd. Australia in the group with India, Pakistan, New Zealand and a qualifier from association teams that gets decided in earlier March. Teams play the other four teams in their group before the semi final teams decided. The other group has West Indies, South Africa, England, Sri Lanka and the other association qualifier. I wonder if some type of fantasy cricket game for two weeks will happen either here or by ICC themselves that did one for the traditional ODI World Cup last year.
Ok, it seems like Bangladesh and Afghanistan are the two associate qualifiers for this T20 World Cup format Group A India New Zealand Australia Pakistan Bangladesh Group B South Africa West Indies Sri Lanka England Afghanistan Within each group they play each other once for four round robin games. After our Easter weekend holidays are over the top two from each group qualify for the two semi-finals that happen March 30th and 31st on a late Wednesday and Thursday night our time. Then at weekend the final is held to decide the overall nation to win it. I would think for this format the best type of fantasy game would have to be four teams play each other once and at end of that the team on bottom eliminated and team on top goes straight into the final. The teams finishing second and third play off in preliminary final to meet the top team to decide the overall winner of the fantasy championship. That means during the group stages you play all this and when they are over two teams are left playing in final at the time of T20 World Cup semi-finals. At that stage there is a break of two days so could be ideal to run an auction type system for those two teams to pick the best players from the four nations taking part in T20 World Cup semi-finals. Basically 44 players two chose from at that point of fantasy game and probably run the auctions over one or two evenings. However to start the whole thing off with four fantasy teams it would not be an auction system simply because time does not permit. After midnight our Tuesday night is first game of India v NZ so the 4 fantasy teams would need to have a squad and team picked before going to bed Tuesday night for round one of fantasy games. Would use scoring system of a present cricket fantasy game so easily found on the internet. I would think 16 man squads is way to go and your 11 for each round needs to be something like 4 batsmen, 1 keeper, 3 allrounders and 3 specialist bowlers. The only way to do it in short space of time is simply run a draft system of 4 fantasy teams picking 16 players for total of 64 picks in a day. Probably have each fantasy team be a franchise with 2 or 3 co-managers that do picks for their franchise. Tricky timing as I have a SC Draft i entered that begins Tuesday night 7pm so I would want to be finished by that time with a draft if I ran such a thing. Only way of doing it in such short space of time is run in Tuesday in day between hours of 9 am and 6 pm and time limit be no more than 30 minutes for each pick with aim of taking about two picks every hour for each franchise. I doubt I will do it but if there was interest I could probably pull it off with right type of organized people. 8 keen people with minimum two managers a franchise is probably best way to make it happen. Short of that I might look at ICC fantasy game later tonight or tomorrow and just enter that to keep me interested in the cricket tournament in next two weeks.
Well did not bother making or entering any fantasy games but fascinating to see India done on their home deck first by no name spinners of New Zealand. Maybe we should add insult to injury and open our bowling against them with Finch and Warner next game