When I was a rather pathetic geek of a teenager, I used to pass the time during advanced mathematics AS level classes, which I had somehow fluked my way into, by developing a system of calculator cricket, using the random-number generator button. Immense charts were drawn up to reckon the probability of dot-balls, run outs, even the odds of bad weather intervening. It used to take about one hour of advanced maths to play 90 overs so during the course of a term, several Test or first-class series could be completed and that meant conjuring teams to take on each other while I was pretending to be solving quadratic equations.
So says our chum Patrick Kidd in his greatest county XIs piece last week. Reminded me that we used to play Howzat using HB pencils, scratching modes of dismissal with our compasses onto each of the six sides. Simpler times. Let your inner geek out via the comments…
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I remember my brother being given the task of writing a program that could score a game of cricket for you instead of all that tedious mucking about with paper and pencils when he was a work experience kid years ago.
He ended up writing something pretty good in the end but as our pavilion doesn’t have mains power and no one had a laptop with a battery that could last long enough it was all a bit academic.
All this while I thought *I* invented calculator cricket!
It was fun to play it right under the noses of the professors. And since the other kids thought that it was weird, I had to play against myself. So any series that India played IRL, was simulated to see how the actual game compared!
Other forms that were popular in middle and high school were book cricket and a wierd form of “spin the wheel” cricket game, played with a safety pin acting as the arrow.
Long train journey from Istanbul to Athens. Pack of cards. Many, many, many rules.
Far too complex to remember.
Book cricket! Those were the days….
I used to play a PC game called “Sticky wicket”. Don’t know if you can still download it. It was a lot of fun though
, much like book cricket, all you control is the batting order and bowling order and a few parameters… The rest is left to probability!
we used to play in school, with a cycle ball roling down a ruler and bat made of pencil, with slazenger bats from ads pasted on them and slip fielders cut out from magazines and mounted on paper! the bat was wedged at the bottom so that we could scoop sixes and cheer out loud the girls thought we were so useless and pathetic!
Oooo…your version seems complicated, we played the plain and simple book cricket. Boring classes were never boring with a text book, 3 mates, pencil and paper to keep score.