Tactics

Cricket Championship allows you to set various tactics that will affect the way your team approach the game as it unfolds. The majority of these options are not shown if you choose to use the basic interface.

Match tactics

Match tactics are set for specific matches. You can save your settings as the default for your team in which case these settings will be used initially when a new match is set up for your team. You can change most of the tactics during a game but they will only come in to play at the start of the next session of play.

You can edit your default match tactics on the default tactics page linked from your team menu.

The toss

You can choose whether to call heads or tails at the toss and whether to bat first or field first if you win the toss.

Aggression

You can set your team's base aggression levels for batting and bowling. These base levels are the starting point for determining how aggressively your players will approach their cricket. Any modifiers from tactics or from settings for individual players are applied to these base levels.

An aggression of 1 is very defensive. For batting this would mean that the priority for the batsman is not getting out and that he is not concerned about scoring runs. For bowling it would mean that the bowling team is just trying to contain the batsmen rather than getting them out.

An aggression of 9 is very aggressive. At this level of aggression batsmen will be trying to get runs whatever the cost and bowlers will be trying to take wickets regardless of the number of runs they concede.

An aggression level of 5 is a healthy balance between scoring runs and not getting out, for batsmen, and between taking wickets and conceding runs for bowlers.

Declaring

Declaration tactics work differently for the first and second innings.

For the first innings you specify how many runs you will score before you declare. After your batsmen have scored this amount your captain will declare at the end of the over.

There are two options to decide when to declare your second innings closed. You can specify how quickly your opponents must score in order to win the match (their required run rate) and/or the total they will need to score to win. You can set whether your team should declare when both the required run rate and required target total have been set or when either requirement has been set.

Batsmen milestones

You can also choose not to declare when one of your batsmen is nearing a milestone. So, if one (or both) of your batsmen are within 5 runs of scoring 50 or 10 runs of scoring a century the declaration will be delayed until they have reached their milestone at which point your captain will declare at the end of the over.

General

Enforcing the follow on

You can indicate here whether you will enfore the follow on if you bat first and score sufficiently more runs than your opposition.

Farming the strike

You can choose that, if you have a designated batsman batting with a non-designated batsman, that the batsmen will try to keep the designated batsman on strike. There are three options: your batsman can refuse runs whenever necessary to keep your designated batsmen on strike; your batsmen can take runs when they are available but refuse a second or third run to keep your designated batsmen on strike or they can take all runs and not worry about designated batsmen farming the strike.

You can set which ball of the over the designated batsman will start trying to score a single to get to the other end to face the next over. You can also set separately how many balls of an over a non-designated batsman will try to score a single to get away from the strike.

Finally, when an opposition batsman is trying to keep the strike you can set whether you want to bring the field up to try and prevent this.

Extending bowlers spells

You can choose one or more situations where you want to ignore the maximum overs per spell for your bowlers: when they have taken a wicket or a chance has been missed or a maiden has been bowled in what would normally be the last over of their spell. If this is set to 'after chance' a dropped catch, good lbw appeal, or what would have been a dismissal on a no-ball will cause the spell to be extended by at least one over. This also means that a bowler will continue bowling regardless of the run rate they have allowed during the spell. The captain will, however, change the bowler if the wicket taking or chance making bowler is too tired to continue.

Taking the new ball

You can choose whether to let your captain delay taking the new ball. The old ball will be kept for the number of overs you specify whilst your captain considers that the bowling attack is more potent with the old ball instead of a new ball. To always take the new ball use the default setting of 0 overs.

Nightwatchman

When a wicket falls late in the day a nightwatchman can be sent in to protect a recognised batsman from having to bat for a few overs and then having to start their innings again in the morning.

If you want to designate one of your batsmen as a nightwatchman you can select their name in the drop down menu.

You also need to choose when your nightwatchman will be used. You must specify how many overs at the end of a days play you have your nightwatchman padded up for. For example, if you choose the last ten overs of the day, if a wicket falls with ten or less overs to go until the close of play the nightwatchman will be used.

You must also specify which of your batsmen will be protected by the nightwatchman. Typically this would be your recognised batsmen, for example number 6 and above in your batting order. When the next batsman to bat is this number or higher in the order your nightwatchman will be sent in to bat.

Batting tactics

There are numerous batting tactics which you can use. Each of the batting tactics has a short description if you place your cursor over the label for the tactic. Batting tactics modify the base level of batting aggression which you have set for your team. Any tactic that is set to 'no change' will not be saved as it will not affect the way your team play. Many tactics also have a threshold value which, when it is reached, the tactic will apply.

For example, to use the tactic 'Balls Faced'. If you want your batsmen to play more defensively early on in their innings you would select 'less than' in the first option, enter a number of balls in the second, 20 say, and choose -1 for the third option to indicate that they should play more defensively.

Batting tactics are cumulative. This means that in our example above if we set each of the three 'Balls Faced' tactics to the same setting any batsman who had faced less than twenty balls would actually bat at an aggression level 3 less than the team's.

Bowling tactics

There are numerous bowling tactics which you can use. Each of the bowling tactics has a short description if you place your cursor over the label for the tactic. Bowling tactics modify the base level of bowling aggression which you have set for your team. Any tactic that is set to 'no change' will not be saved as it will not affect the way your team play. Many tactics also have a threshold value which, when it is reached, the tactic will apply.

For example, to use the tactic 'Balls Faced'. If you want your bowlers to bowl more aggressively when a batsman has just started their innings you would select 'less than' in the first option, enter a number of balls in the second, 20 say, and choose +1 for the third option to indicate that they should attack the batsman more.

Bowling tactics are cumulative. This means that in our example above if we set each of the three 'Balls Faced' tactics to the same setting your bowlers will bowl to any batsman who had faced less than twenty balls at an aggression level 3 greater than the team's.

Targetting opposing players

Some tactics allow you to specify a player in the opposition. These tactics allow you to play more or less aggressively against that player only. So, if your opponent has a star bowler who takes the majority of their wickets you may want to bat more defensively against him only.

Team tactics

Rather than entering a lot of batting and bowling tactics each match you can set 'team tactics' which are saved for your team. You can do this using the Tactics option in your team's left-hand menu. First choose a tactic set to modify and then batting or bowling tactics are specified in the same way as for a match and you can then save these tactics with a name of your choice.

You can save one set of batting tactics and one set of bowling tactics as your default tactics. These will be used initially for any new match involving your team.

Some tactics do not appear in the tactics set page, for example tactics targetting opposing players, because they apply only to individual matches.

Applying team tactics

To use one of your saved sets of tactics for a match you select the name of the tactic set you want and tick the Apply tactics box. When you click on Select tactics your tactics will be used. Using this option will overwrite any tactics that appear in the tactics set page regardless of whether you have specified values for them for this match.