Fantasy Cricket Administrator League 2010

2 minute read

Bert writes:

Everyone in my office is currently all abuzz about the prospect of a Fantasy World Cup. I wondered if anything similar existed for our favourite pastime. Sadly it appears not, so I have felt the need to invent one.

Welcome to Fantasy Cricket Administrator League 2010.

What you have to do is pick a cricket club management team comprising the people that you think will perform best over the season. By “perform best”, I don’t mean any of that happy fans / financial stability bollocks. No. I’ve been studying the way that county and national administrators seemingly do their jobs and I’ve come up with some points scoring and selection rules.

Firstly, you can pick from the management of any of the 27,000 counties in English cricket, plus one person from the ECB. You can also have two “overseas players” from the BCCI, PCB, ICC, WICB, SPECTRE, SMERSH, or any other publicity-focussed body with only half an eye on cricket. Don’t forget, anybody who turns up with a suitcase full of cash despite not knowing the first thing about cricket is also eligible to join your team.

You need five “board members” in all. Points will be scored according to the following:

• Getting on TV – 1 point
• Mentioning actual cricket while on TV – minus 5 points
• Making vague threats towards “grass roots cricket” if you don’t get your way – 5 points
• Discussing television deals as if they matter – 5 points
• Describing cricket as “part of the entertainment business” – 10 points
• Describing fans as “customers” – 5 points
• Describing fans as “the relevant demographic” – 20 points
• Closing the museum to make way for a sponsors’ bar – 10 points
• Describing a player’s genito-urinary diseases in detail to the whole world – 100 points
• Spending half of your club’s income on buying a Test match, then losing three days’ play because of bad drains – 30 points
• Staging a Test match on an unplayable pitch – 10 points
• Being responsible for inspecting that pitch a day beforehand but thinking it is OK – 30 points
• Having your captain resign – 10 points
• Having all your players go on strike – 20 points
• Categorically banning a player forever, then saying that “forever” could be interpreted as “for the rest of the week” – 10 points
• Being sacked – minus 10 points
• Not being sacked despite a whole pile of obvious reasons for it – 50 points
• Being imprisoned – 1000 points (*)

(*) Players will be limited to one IPL administrator each, for obvious reasons.