An IPL Simulation Game

Over the pandemic I got heavily interested in the online basketball manager game: Basketball GM. After countless hours of playing it, I looked to see if there were any cricket games similar to it. To my disappointment I could not find any. While there exists cricket manager games such as Cricket Captain and Cricket Coach both are significantly complex games that require attention to detail. I wanted a cricket manager game that was a bit simpler than that, and that's why I created Indian Cricket League (ICL).

To start the game you have 3 different game options to choose from.

1. Start with 2021 IPL rosters 8 teams, double round robin schedule from IPL 2021 (This contains an older version of player ratings, so do not expect all features that exists in the other 2 versions to work)
2. Start with 2022 IPL rosters 10 teams, 70 game schedule from IPL 2022
3. Start with a mega auction 10 teams, 70 game schedule from IPL 2022 All of these modes have the same components just with different roster compositions.

On the left side of the auction screen is a drop down menu that allows you to look at the current rosters of every team in the auction. This is helpful to keep track of what players you have and also to see how much money opposing teams have left to spend.

Each player up for auction has all their ratings visible. There are 4 batting & bowling attributes: Batting IQ, Timing, Power, Running, Economy, Wicket Taking, Clutch, and Accuracy. All of these attributes are combined to form the batting and bowling overalls of the player.

There are 6 different actions you can take for each player during an auction. -Bid: Clicking this button allows you to place a bid on a player. When you are the last team left bidding for a player you get them. -Drop Bid: Click this button exits you from the auction of a player and the rest of the bids for that player is simulated. -Sim Player: Click this button and player auction is simulated, unlike with Drop Bid you can still get the player after clicking this button -Next Player: This button serves no purpose unless a glitch occurs and you can not get to the next player in an auction -Sim Auction: Click this button to simulate the rest of the auction. -Move on from Auction: Click this button to progress from the auction to the start of the season. If auction wasn't completed it will also sim the rest of the auction.

On the right side of the screen there is two lists that can be toggled between. One list showcases the names of players to come onto the auction block, and the other shows the amounts that players have sold for already in the auction.

During the auction eventually you may hit the international cap of 8 players. Once you hit this you will be alerted and not be able to bid on any more international players. Outside of this if you hit the roster limit of 25 players or 90 crores then the rest of the auction will be simulated.

From the season screen you are able to perform many different actions pertinent to the game. At the top of it are 4 hyperlinks each of which link to different pages.

• Change Team Lineup
• Power Rankings
• Player Ratings
• Player Stats

On the right side of the screen lies various tables. The first table lists the standings of the current season with it being ordered by points and then NRR. Under the standings in order are the MVP leaderboard, Orange Cap leaderboard, Purple Cap leaderboard, most sixes leaderboard, and most wickets. For any of these tables if you would like to see info about the team or player you can click on them and you should be redirected to either the specified team page or player page. Then in the middle of the screen lies the actual schedule of games. Teams are listed with home on top and away on bottom. To play a game you can click the play game button to go to the game page, otherwise if you would like to skip to a certain match you can scroll down and click the sim to match button under the specified match. When you click the button the game may stop simulating if your team has a game and there is an injury in your lineup. You can also view scorecards of old matches by clicking the scorecard button. Then once all the games in a season are done you can click the big blue button to take you to the (Resignings page)(#Resignings).

To play a game click the triangle in the center of the screen. Once you click the triangle the whole game will be simulated. Ideally in the future this will be changed so that you can watch the game ball by ball if you would like instead. To view the ball by ball there is a play by play log on the right side of the screen. This log disapears once you navigate away from the game. On the right side there is also a scorecard that showcases the stats of all players in the match. This scorecard can be viewed later if desired by clicking scorecard under the match when back on the season screen. There is also a player of the match decided for each game by an algorithm that can be seen at the top of the screen. The stadium bowling rating goes from 0.7 - 1.5 with 0.7 being the least friendly for bowlers and 1.5 being the most. At 1.5 stadiums expected totals of 160 to be defended easily, while at 0.7 no total is safe.

After the seasons end you have the option to retain players for the next season. To retain players all you need to do is click the retain button though there is a chance they will refuse to come back to your team and instead opt into the auction. If you accidentally retain a player you can use the clear resignings button, but be noted all resignings would be cancelled and then those players could refuse you to come back when you try to resign them again. There is also the sim resignings button if you are too lazy to be bothered with thinking specifically. Finally when you are done with resignings you can click the go to auction button to get to the next season's auction.

During the season the only thing that you like real life IPL teams can do to make your team better is picking the best possible lineups. Making sure on batting tracks to have a lineup able to score big and on bowling tracks to have bowlers to skittle the opposition. To change your bowling order all you must do is pick which bowler you would like to bowl each over by using the table located at the top of the page. Bowlers can bowl only 4 overs and not bowl two consecutively. Bowlers also must be in the top 11 of your batting lineup. To change your batting lineup you must scroll below the bowling order table. Then to switch batter spots you can either use arrows to move up or down, or use the swap button to swap two players' positions with each other. Thre can not be more than 4 international players in the starting 11 at any time. There also may not be any injured players in the lineup. One thing to note is that overalls may not tell the full story of a player's performance as you can see in the screnshot. Hardik Patel has a better economy than Jasprit Bumrah.

The Power Rankings screen allows you to sort teams by different attributes. To sort by an attribute just click on the column header for it. For example to sort teams by timing click on tmg. You can view Power Rankings for both teams at the current moment and also when their roster is fully healthy. To toggle between click the button in the left top corner of the screen.

The Player Ratings screen allows you to sort through players by different rating attributes. To sort by an attribute much like the Power Rankings screen just click on the column header for it. As seen in the screenshot you can also filter players by typing in queries. Putting a ">",">=","<", and "<=" are accepted as queries. Outside of this you can also type in values and only players with attributes matching those values will show up.

Like the Player Ratings screen, the Player Stats Screen allows you to sort through players with the same mechanisms except instead of rating attributes it is with stats. To toggle between bowling and batting stats click on the button in the top left corner.

Any time you click on a player's name you should be directed to their player info screen. On this screen you can see the attributes of a player along with how much they changed that season. You can also see their season averages (notice how Phillips despite his high overall struggled). Then below their season averages is their match by match performance. To see the scorecard from a match just click on the match number.

On the Team Info screen you can see the past results for the team by clicking on the Game Log Link. You can also see the bowling rate of the team's home stadium with 0.7 being best for batting and 1.5 best for bowling. Then scrolling down you can see the bowling order for the team and the batting lineup as well.

In the Game Log screen you can see all the match results for a team and click on the scorecard links to see the scorecards for those matches.