Club rules

• New members’ subs: anyone joining from January to June pays the full subs. From July to September they pay half. From October to December they pay just the social membership, then the full subs in January with everyone else.
• Bar and food prices: once the club has a bar, set the price of a pint on the Prices board. When the pavilion and bar have grown (a small pavilion and a volunteer-run bar or better), a Bar and food prices card appears on the home screen: pints, soft drinks, ice creams and bar food, changed any time. Dearer prices take more per sale but fewer are sold, fewer of the public come in, and members grumble.
• Match officials, in the shop: umpires (from players taking turns to panel umpires, with two umpires covering days when the opposition brings none) and scorers (from the batting side keeping the book to live scores online). Poor umpiring causes rows and docked points; a poor scorebook costs points too; scores online bring people to the club.
• Bills go out on the 1st of each month, for the month just gone: upkeep, wages (coaching, the groundsman and other staff), insurance, the pavilion’s gas, electricity and water, and loan repayments, all from the current account. Make sure it has enough to cover them: anything short comes out of savings, then investments, and after that the club is overdrawn.
• Two pots: the current account pays for everything; savings earn interest every month, at a rate the bank sets each January (between 4% and 8% a year; the Bank board shows this year’s). After each month you choose whether to save it or spend it.
• The finance secretary writes to you whenever running the club loses money in a month (in winter, only if the club is losing money over the year). Building work and new kit don’t count against you. A month in the red isn’t much of a worry: subs come in at the start of every season and good investments pay their way. What matters is making money over the year.
• The members can vote you out, but never while savings are £2,500 or more. If the club has lost money over the last twelve months and savings fall below £2,500, you get a formal warning and a full season to put it right: raise the bar prices, the match fee or the subs, cut spending, or build savings back up. If nothing has changed by the end of that September, members vote. Lose and the game is over; survive and you get another season, but the next vote is harder.
• No match fees on rained-off days, or when the square is unfit. A wet summer hurts the accounts.
• Fair prices: for a village club, members think subs of £80–£120 and a match fee of £8–£10 are fair, with the other price in the middle of its range. Beyond that is steep. Better facilities and a higher status move the ranges up a little.
• Prices are judged together: members weigh up what a season costs them all in, from the subs, about 14 match fees and about 25 pints in the pavilion. A lower match fee makes higher subs fair, cheap pints soften steep fees, and better facilities make members happy to pay more. The Prices board shows the total and what members expect.
• Junior prices work the same way: with a junior match fee of about £2.50, a joining fee of £30–£50 is a bargain, £50–£75 fair and steep above that. A cheaper junior match fee moves those bands up, and a dearer one moves them down. The junior match fee can be anything from free up to £6, £8 from Super Village Club and £10 from County Outground. Better junior kit moves them up a little.
• If the match fee is too high, players think so: each month one to three of them leave the club without paying their last match fee.
• The more members the better: members who don’t get a game come to watch home games and spend money in the pavilion (more of them with a good clubhouse and cheap beer), and the noticeboard says each month how many played and how many watched. Happy drinkers are less likely to leave for want of a game.
• Members come and go all year, and the month report says who and why. Some move away, which nobody can help. Others leave for a club with better facilities, to play at a higher standard, because they aren’t getting enough batting or bowling, over the cost, or because they’re unhappy with how the club is run. Keep investing in the ground and the sides to bring new members in and keep the ones you have.
• One strip, three sides. Until the club lays a four-strip square, its one strip can take three sides a weekend at most: two on one day and one on the other. A four-strip square makes room for more.
• Men’s and women’s cricket. The club is founded as a men’s or a women’s club. The other section is an extra: add a side for it on the Teams board mid-season, or when picking next season’s teams. A few players sign up straight away, and taster sessions (February to August) bring more. Each section raises its own sides from its own players, and has its own leagues on Saturdays and Sundays.
• Ground grading. Leagues inspect the ground as the 1st XIs climb: at the third or fourth promotion, and at least once more before the Premier Division. Sometimes it puts the promotion on hold: a pop-up says what the league needs, with a button straight to it in the shop. Buy it before January and the promotion is confirmed (with a pop-up to say so); there’s a last-chance reminder in December, and in January the side stays down while the third-placed side goes up. Sometimes it lets the side up on condition the work is done by the end of the next September (with a reminder in August), or the side goes back down.
• Umpires and scorers for each side, on the Teams board: pay a member a small fee each game to umpire or score. It costs money, but keeps the less able players involved and at the club, and means fewer rows and scorebook mistakes.
• The first year. A new club gets no overdraft: a month that ends in the red closes it (the bank takes what it can from savings first). Building work in the first year often runs over budget, and setting up the club brings bills nobody mentioned. Spend the grant too quickly and the club won’t last the year.
• After the first year, three months in the red and the bank closes the club. Two months in the red brings an emergency meeting, and losing money with little in savings brings a warning from the finance secretary and, a season later, a vote. Members don’t remove a chairman lightly, but it happens.
• Umpires and scorers. The club’s own (in the shop) look after the Saturday and Sunday 1st XIs. Other sides can have their own on the Teams board: £40 a game for an umpire and £30 for a scorer, and volunteers do it for free for the 4th XI and below.
• Disasters are rarer with better security and insurance, and more likely for a club that climbs the ladder faster than most. A club with no money and no insurance to cover a disaster can fold on the spot, and that is most likely in the first year.
• Insurance and security, in the shop. Burglaries, vandalism, high winds, roof damage, floods and fire strike now and then, minor, medium or serious, and each one asks whether to put it right now or make do. Insurance pays a share of the loss, if the policy covers that kind of damage: basic cover only covers fire and storms. Premiums grow with what the club owns, up to £400 a month for full cover at the biggest grounds, and comprehensive and full cover are only worth it for a well-equipped club. Security, from lights and cameras to a security firm, makes break-ins and vandalism rarer and the insurance cheaper.
• Give to the community, in the bank: the scouts, the village hall, local charities, the parks trust or the food bank. Every £1,000 given is a reputation point and draws more people to the club, as many times as you like. A club with a bigger reputation is expected to give more: £2,000 from reputation 35, £5,000 from 60 and £7,500 from 80.
• Social members and concessions, on the Prices board. Family and friends can join as social members (£5 is cheap, £50 steep): they watch and spend money in the pavilion. About 5–15% of members are unemployed and 10–15% retired, and pay the concession subs you set.
• Thanks from the captain: buy four to eight things from the shop in pre-season, January to March (how many it takes changes each season, and the pre-season panel counts what you’ve bought). In April the captain thanks you: the club is growing, more people are joining and the pavilion is busy. The players are happier, and that season they make at most one request to spend money (a captain’s request or “where’s the money going?”, not both). The practice balls and the school field still come up when they need to.
• Festivals and council fines: three festivals a year at the ground, on weekends between April and September, chosen at random from a farmers’ market, a sausage festival, a spring music festival, a stay and play weekend for children (where children join the junior section and parents spend in the pavilion), a food festival and an artisan market. Each brings in money, about £1,500 to £10,000 depending on the club’s status, and more with a pavilion and a bar, even for a brand-new club. And from the club’s second season, three to six times a year the council fines the club, £250 to £1,000, for noise, parking, litter and the like (a new club gets its first season free of council fines). Every kind of fine can be headed off with something from the shop: a cleaner for litter (from the club member), trade waste and burning rubbish (from a cleaning company once a week) and food hygiene (twice a week); a gravel car park or better for cars on the verge; a village groundsman or better for an overgrown hedge; a part-time bar manager with a licence or better for noise after closing time; and social media and a newsletter or better for sponsors’ signs without planning permission. When the council officer finds nothing to fine, the news says who saved the club the money.
• Clubhouse bills: from a small pavilion up, gas, electricity and water cost £400 to £1,000 a month: more for a bigger pavilion and more members (more showers, fridges and the bar open longer), and more in winter for the heating. Solar panels in the shop (under Clubhouse) are a one-off buy: £5,000 cuts the bills by 50–75% a month, and £15,000 (with a battery and a heat pump) by 75–100%, most in summer. The month report shows what they save.
• End-of-season awards (in the shop, under Clubhouse): trophies for every side at an awards night in September. £200 a side every season for trophies the players keep, or engraved trophies (£600 a side) or silver cups and a cabinet (£1,000 a side) bought once, as the club keeps them; a new side gets its own at the next awards night. Players who feel valued stay at the club.
• Play with friends (on the home screen): start a league and name it, or join one with its code, with a new club of your own for it. The founder picks men’s or women’s cricket, and every club in the league is founded with that Saturday 1st XI. The league is one Saturday league of 13 divisions, made up with clubs from round about, and every club starts in the bottom division with only its Saturday 1st XI in its first season. From the second season a club can add a 2nd XI and below in the same league (never in the same division as the side above), and Sunday and other sides in its own leagues, as normal. Each year the top two in every division go up (more when a division is crowded with friends’ clubs) and the bottom two go down, so it’s a race to the Premier Division: some clubs will go higher and quicker than others. Each side’s strength for the season is fixed at the end of March. Everyone plays one season at a time: the league starts in April once every club has finished its pre-season, and nobody starts the next season until everyone has finished December. There are no votes of no confidence. A club that would fold goes into administration instead: its debts are written off and it starts again with £10,000, some of its facilities are stepped down and some members leave, and its Saturday sides go down a division (two the second time, and so on, never below the bottom division): at the end of the season if it happens in the season, or for the coming season if it happens in the off-season. Every club in the league hears about it. The League board by the ground has the race to the top, this weekend’s fixtures, the trophy cabinet (the Premier Division’s champions), where every club has got to, the code and invitations. A friend who joins after the league has started joins from the next season, in the bottom division. The founder can take out a club that has stopped playing; anyone can leave, and their club carries on in the general simulator.
• The PA (hired in the shop once the club is a Premier Village Club, set up from the PA board; £30, £1,000 or £2,000 a month, rising 3% to 6% every January): a volunteer PA, one afternoon a week, keeps the practice balls topped up and gives a winter forecast on the PA board, in the Notices from August to March, and in the news each October: how much the club needs in the bank to get through to April (from the monthly fees, wages, bills and loan repayments, with no match fees coming in, less what the bar, hire and sponsors still bring in over the winter, and January’s subs), how much it will lose (or make) each month, and whether the current account will hold out. A part-time PA also gets repair jobs fixed (patched, fixed or overhauled) up to a limit a job and a limit a month. A full-time PA also moves money: into savings or investments (whatever is over a level, or a set amount each month) and out of them (to top up the current account when it’s low, or a set amount each month), with an optional total, and twice a season (once between January and April, once between July and October) tips the markets: the investment fund should grow 35% to 50% over the next three or four months. The PA is right about nine times in ten. What the PA did is in the month report.
• Objectives: choose a target for the club, from six: build the membership, be financially secure, league cricket on Saturdays and Sundays, start a youth section, develop the ground and its surroundings, or a high-performing club. Each has a motto and levels that get harder. When a level is done the club’s reputation goes up, and you choose to develop it further or focus on another. Switch at any time from the Notices or Club status.
• Club camaraderie (the bar on the club’s name card): how the players feel about the club. Click it to see what has moved it lately. High, and the bar does a roaring trade; low, and players start to drift away. What moves it is for you to find out.
• Teas for each side: choose how many of the sides get teas at home (in March and July, Saturday sides first). Only their home games cost teas, bring in tea money and build the club’s name. A side left out may ask.
• The handyman (in the shop, under Staff and kit): from a club member who does bits and bobs to a full-time handyman with parts and materials (£7,500 a month). He looks after everything that wears except the pitch: the square, the outfield, the covers and the pitch equipment are the groundsman’s job, and the chairman’s ground works: everything wears more slowly and fewer repairs come up, and from the second level up nothing he looks after falls below 50% (60%, then 70%). The full-time handyman keeps everything at 100% and sees to every repair himself, but now and then he’s away, and something breaks while he’s gone.
• The chairman’s portrait: chosen when the club is founded (a new face, or one thing at a time: age, face, hair, beard, hat, glasses or monocle, jewellery, clothes and mood, from beaming to grumpy). Every chairman is sixty to eighty. Change it any time from the chairman’s profile (click your name beside the club’s status); other clubs see it on your club’s page.
• The club crest: chosen when the club is founded (a new crest, or a new shape, colours or figure on their own), and changed at any time by clicking it beside the club’s name.
• View ground (under the ground’s name, beside the club’s status): the ground drawn from above, with everything bought from the shop on show, and more people watching as the club grows. Point at or tap anything to see what it is, and click the pavilion to look inside. Other clubs’ grounds open from the map and from their club pages.
• Naming the pavilion: once the club has the larger pavilion, give it a name (or rename it) from the shop’s pavilion card or the name beside the club’s status.
• The end game: straight after the season a club reaches the top status, a club in debt asks you to take it on. Run both clubs (switch between them from the club’s name card), retire from the club at the top and take on the new one (you can come out of retirement later), or keep going and hear again after the next season.
• The club map (the Map board): put your club on a map of Great Britain by searching for your general area (a town, or the first half of your postcode) and clicking it; your village appears there, a mile or two from the area’s centre. The map shows real borders but no place names: county lines, then the districts and cities as you zoom in, then the local ward lines around the villages close up. It’s off until you choose it, and only clubs’ own village names show: no real names. Find clubs near you, see who’s online, follow them, propose friendlies, and chat with friends (players in the same friends’ league). Messages aren’t private: block or report anything you don’t like, or turn messages off.
• The players ask for cheaper prices: each season’s match fees, subs and pints are counted as cheap, fair or steep. After two or three steep seasons in a row, or six to eight fair (or steep) seasons in a row, a captain asks, in the off-season, for prices to come down for next season: the club down the road is cheaper. Cut them (match fees just under fair, a pint about a tenth under), look at the prices yourself, or keep them (players grumble, and with steep prices one or two go down the road). Keep prices cheap and they won’t ask.
• Playing a month in one go (“Play all of June”): quicker, but nobody is there to fix things as they happen. Any repair job still open when you press it, and anything that breaks during the month, costs 50% more to patch, fix or overhaul. The button warns you first. Playing week by week, things get fixed before they get worse.
• Where’s the money going? Once the first season has started, if six to ten weeks go by without anything bought from the shop (repairs and ground works don’t count), a player or captain asks why the bar takings and match fees aren’t going back into the club. Ignore it (the club is saving for something big, usually the square or the pavilion: the players may be content, or one or two may leave), spend the money now (the shop opens), or compromise: promise something from the shop within four weeks while saving for the big one. Keep the promise and the players are happy; break it and one or two leave.
• County cricket midweek (Super Village Club and up): local counties hire the ground on weekdays from April to September for junior (county age-group), 2nd XI and senior matches: one-day games on a Wednesday, and two- and three-day games from the Tuesday. They pay £1,000 a day, a few spectators use the bar, and each day wears the square a little (less with a good groundsman). For junior and 2nd XI matches they ask first, at the start of the month: agree and the reputation goes up, but the square and the club’s kit take more wear; say no and they go elsewhere. A County Outground gets more bookings, and more senior ones, than a Super Village Club. The month’s bookings are in the news and on the Results page. If the square is under 55% at the start of a month, the counties take their matches elsewhere.
• Saturday leagues have 10 to 16 divisions, and new sides start at the bottom. A side can go up at most three seasons in a row: the fourth season it settles in. A club doesn’t need its 1st XI in the Premier Division to reach any status: status is about the ground, the facilities, the members and the sides.
• Washout weekends: every season, between two and six weekends are rained off for every side, whatever the covers. No match fees, no teas and nobody spending in the pavilion that weekend, and league games are abandoned with the points shared.
• Investments, in the bank: spare money can go into an investment fund, worked out at the end of each month: it can grow or fall. Take money out at any time.
• Loans, in the bank: borrow from £500 up to the bank’s limit, which grows with the club’s facilities and assets, its reputation and its status.
• Sports TV, in the shop under Food and drink: from a telly behind the bar to a premium sports bar. The subscription is paid every month, and the bar fills up for the big games, most of all in winter.
• Prices and status. Each step up the status ladder makes members happy to pay about 7% more for subs, match fees and the bar.
• Big building (pavilion, scoreboard) is November to March only. Everything else, including sightscreens and small items like bar chairs, benches, darts, showers and practice kit, can be bought at any time.
• You can buy any level you can afford, skipping the ones in between. Levels you can’t afford yet are pencilled in.
• The club folds after three months overdrawn, or two months without raising a side. An overdraft at the end of a month is cleared from savings and investments first, so a club with money put by is never left in the red.
• Neglect costs more: let a facility or piece of kit fall below 55% (by putting off its repairs or only patching it up) and the usual repairs may not do any more. It can need a major overhaul, at nearly the cost of a new one, or an upgrade; until then, repairs and working parties can’t lift it past 54%. The club is asked for one major overhaul a season at most (now and then two; up to three once it’s a Super Village Club), but everything else keeps wearing out. And let anything fall below 10% and it’s on its last legs: one last chance to overhaul it, for almost the price of a new one (savings and investments can pay), or it’s gone from the club, with anything that can’t run without it (the bar goes with the pavilion), and has to be bought again. (The square and the outfield are looked after by the weekly pitch care instead.) In the general simulator, a Super Village Club or bigger doesn’t fold: its creditors save it, but not with you in charge.
• What’s bringing people to your club (on the scoreboard): what is going well for the club in bringing in members of the public, who come to watch, spend money in the pavilion, and spread the word. The bar, snacks, food, benches, seats, the car park, the scoreboard, publicity, league cricket, juniors and good teas can all help; run-down facilities put people off. It isn’t a score to fill up, and it isn’t one of the things the club needs for its next status (those are on the Club status list), but the more people the club brings in, the faster its reputation grows.
• The club saves on this device after every move, and to your account when you leave the game (or switch to another tab or app). Press Save game in the bar at the top to save to your account straight away.

• Match fee: can change any week, but players grumble each time.
• Fines: five kinds, each set from nothing to £3 in the decisions panel: dropped catches, misfields, turning up late, leaving early and ducks. Players pay when it happens, so the kitty varies from week to week. Fines that add up to more than about £9 a side a match make players grumble.
• Pitch care: leave it, cut the grass, cut and roll, or full pitch prep. Better equipment makes it go further.
• Team night out: up to three a year, and only if you have a bar. The bar takes good money, but Saturday’s teams play with sore heads.

• Minor repairs: fix them now, or put them off. Put-off jobs cost a third more each month, wear the facility down, and after three months do real damage.
• Staff are a running cost: the groundsman is hired by the month, with nothing to pay up front. Each level costs 10% more than the one below, and he asks for 10% more pay every season you keep him.
• Practice balls: nets and bowling machines use them up. New balls help the bowlers and the batters, and performances improve. With six or fewer left practice is a little less useful, and with none it’s half as useful. When the nets are down to the last half-dozen, the 1st or 2nd XI captain will ask for new ones after a weekend (at most once a month): buy 12 or 24 on the spot, or tell them to make do, which they won’t like.
• Bowling machines break down now and then and are useless until repaired.
• Three levels of repair: patch it (cheap, but often needs doing again), fix it properly, or overhaul it (no new jobs there for three months). Damage from storms, vandals and the weather can be repaired straight from What happened in the month report.
• Small buys, any month: bar chairs, benches, darts, showers, practice kit and bar snacks, from a jar of sweets and ice creams (with a freezer) to crisps, supermarket own-brand, top-quality and premium snacks.

• Choose who does the teas, from no teas at all to a professional caterer, and what each player pays for them (£0 to £5, home games only). Both sides pay: the club’s players and the visitors’ eleven, so every home game brings in tea money from about 22 players. Good teas lift your reputation and keep members at the club, and visiting players who enjoy them sometimes join from their own clubs (so do players impressed by facilities better than a club like yours usually has). No teas annoys everyone, and some players leave over it.

• Winter nets (start of February): for your members, paid for February and March. Choose who pays: players paying more than the cost (a profit for the club), breaking even, players paying three-quarters, half or a quarter, or the club paying out of membership. The more players pay, the fewer come. From outdoor nets in the cold on a Sunday morning, to the leisure centre sports hall for one, two or three hours a week, to an indoor cricket school or a professional net centre. Better nets keep members happy, bring new ones in and sharpen the teams for April and May.
• Teams and leagues (end of season, in the chairman’s report): how many Saturday and Sunday XIs next season, and which enter a league. Each club has its own Saturday and Sunday league, each with 6 to 12 divisions; new sides start at the bottom and the top two go up each year. League sides pay a fee, play every week from May and concede if they can’t raise eleven, so each needs about eleven members on its day. Friendly sides don’t: friendlies aren’t arranged every weekend, and when players are short the game is simply called off. A club can open with up to three sides in its first season, then add up to two more a season (in the chairman’s report, mid-season, or one of each). Junior sides don’t count. Now and then the captain of a side without an umpire and a scorer asks for them; say yes and they go on the Teams board.
• Members, sides and status: each step up the status ladder needs more paid members and more sides, and from Established Club up some of them in leagues (Saturday or Sunday, any XI). A Village Club needs 30 members and 2 sides. A County Outground needs 6 sides on a Saturday, so three grounds, and an Associate International Venue 185 members and 10 sides, 8 of them on a Saturday on four grounds, and 8 in leagues. It’s all on the Status board’s checklist.
• The captain: in March of the club’s first season you choose the 1st XI captain from four or five members (the Sunday XI’s captain at first, the Saturday 1st XI’s once there is one). Each has scores out of ten for loyalty, ambition, all-round cricket, motivator, community spirit and a head for money, and things they care about and don’t: results, the juniors, the whole club or the money. A good cricketer and motivator makes the 1st XI stronger, a motivator lifts every side, and community spirit brings in members. Captains don’t always stay: a bigger club may come for them, and then you choose again. And once in a long while, after a poor season, the members vote on whether the captain stays, and you have a vote too.
• The captain’s requests: none in the club’s first season, then once or twice a season, between April and November, the 1st XI captain or a senior player asks for the next level of something the club is short of. What they ask for follows what the captain cares about: a captain who wants results asks for coaching, nets, practice kit, winter nets and umpires and scorers; one who cares about the juniors asks for the junior section and its kit; one who thinks about the whole club asks for the pavilion, the bar, seating, umpires and scorers for every side and a better second ground; a captain with a head for money asks for less, and says so when you’re spending too much. Requests start small and grow with the club. Sort it out on the spot (savings top up the current account if needed), promise it before the next season starts in April, or say not now. A request sorted or a promise kept makes members more likely to stay. A request turned down or a promise broken is remembered: a broken promise costs players, reputation and the members’ trust, and each one hurts more than the last, and a captain who’s let down too often walks out. Requests come from the captain, and from the club’s other league sides when they’re stuck on the school field: those can be promised a better ground within two seasons. Open promises are on the Notices board, with reminders in January and March.
• Ways to play (on the home screen): the general simulator, with no set goal, or a challenge: Reach the Prem (the Saturday 1st XI into the Premier Division of its league), £150k in the bank (start with £150,000, a forgiving first year and fewer disasters: take the club to the top), Max out (eight sides out on one Saturday, whatever the results) and Hard mode (everything’s harder, but the aim is still the top, an Associate International Venue; if the club goes under, the score is how many seasons it lasted). A challenge ends when it’s done; carry the club on in the general simulator or start something new. Your best for each is kept. Leaderboards (in the bar at the top) rank clubs from every player: in the general simulator the quickest to the top status, to buy everything in the shop and to 150 juniors, the most money and members, and the best win record (after 500 games); and each challenge. A club goes on them only if it’s entered when it’s founded (a box on the new-club form). Up to 12 clubs are saved at once: Menu at the top switches between them or goes back to the home screen.
• The chairman’s profile (click your name by the club’s name): the members decide what kind of chairman you are from how you’ve run the club over the last twelve months: the People’s Champion (the bar, the pavilion, cheap prices and socials), the Cricket Purist (umpires, scorers, the square and plenty of new balls), the Results Chairman (bowling machines, training kit, a coach and winter nets) or the Finance Bro (the Finance Whizz for a chairwoman: big savings, investments, high prices and slow spending). They give their verdict at the end of each season, and other chairmen see it on your club’s page.
• One side per division: a club can’t have two sides in the same division. If the 2nd XI is in the bottom division, the 3rd XI plays friendlies until the 2nd XI goes up. A side that finishes in the top two can’t go up into a division where the club already has a side, and if a side is relegated into a lower side’s division, the lower side drops a division too (or, at the bottom, plays friendlies).
• The Tables board on the boundary shows each league side’s results (won or lost), its division’s table, and every other division in the league, plus the honours board. The same rival clubs move up and down the divisions year after year. A first XI that keeps improving usually goes up about three seasons in four. Sides playing friendlies only have no table: enter them in a league in the chairman’s report.
• A third side with one ground: one ground fits two sides a day, one at home and one away, but a third side can play away friendlies only. It plays when enough members are free, brings in match fees every week and is a good way to bring new players in mid-season. It can’t enter a league without a home ground (rent another ground in the shop).
• The grounds, and who plays where: the club’s own ground is the home ground; grounds rented in the shop are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grounds, numbered in the order the club takes them on (a ground rented instead of another takes its number and its sides). Name the home ground when you found the club, and each new ground when you rent it: type a name, or pick one made up from the village, villages nearby and the county. Rename any of them from the Teams board. The Teams board shows each ground with its sides on Saturday and Sunday: two a day, taking turns at home. Use Move to put a side, men’s or women’s, on another ground (into a free place, or swapping with a side already there), or to swap it with the side playing away friendlies only (not a league side: it needs a home ground). Sides keep their ground from one season to the next; new sides take the first free place, the home ground first and then the best extra ground. A side moved to a worse ground complains, and one to four of its players leave (more from a 1st XI, and more for a big step down). From best to worst: the home ground and the estate ground with the full works, the estate ground, the redeveloped works ground, the old works ground, the school field, then away friendlies only. The same happens when renting one ground instead of another, or giving one up, pushes a side onto a worse ground. Moving a side up never upsets anyone.
• The Teams board on the boundary shows every side, who is at home and away this weekend, and lets you add a friendly side mid-season. One ground fits two sides a day, one at home and one away. Extra grounds are rented by the month in the shop, up to four grounds in all, each fitting two more sides a day; when the club rents a better one, the chairman decides whether to keep the old one too. The ladder: the school field (Saturdays first, for a season, then all weekend: the first extra ground is always the school field on Saturdays), the old works ground with its own pavilion, the works ground redeveloped (£6,000 once, the same rent), the estate ground with its own groundstaff and nets, and the estate ground with the full works (£1,000 a month more). Halfway through each season, the sides playing at the school field tell the chairman they deserve better than a school pitch: lease a better ground on the spot, promise one before next season, or tell them to make do and lose a player or two.
• Juniors: start a junior section in the shop, from volunteers running one side up to a full academy, and buy junior kit and facilities to go with it. Set the junior joining fee and match fee on the Prices board (always lower than adult prices). Each March you decide which junior age groups play, and which join the junior league. Juniors move up to senior cricket at the end of each season and their families come to watch, but the section rarely pays for itself: spend too much on it and senior members start to grumble.
• More cricket mid-season: when there are more members than places (more than 22 with one side), players who can’t get a game may ask for an extra friendly side, and some threaten not to pay their subs next season. Starting one paves the way for a Saturday league side the following season.
• Ground works (October to March): re-seeding, better seed, aerating, fertiliser, loam and re-levelling. They lift the square and outfield and help all next season.
• Fines kitty (end of September): share it out, in quarters, between an awards dinner, new caps, the ground fund, a donation to the village hall, or keeping it for next year.
• Prices go up every January: league fees, match and practice balls, winter nets and teas by 5–10%, and repairs by 5%.
• Overdrawn in the off-season: October to December there are no match fees. The bank looks ahead to January’s subs: if they will cover the overdraft, three months in the red doesn’t close the club. It has until the end of February to clear it, and then the bank won’t lend it anything for six months. There’s no emergency vote before January. In the season, three months in the red closes the club.

Results are out of your hands: the captains pick the sides and the players do the rest. Good facilities, practice and a well-kept square help. At the end of each September the club moves up the status ladder if it meets the next status’s requirements, from Founding Club to Associate International Venue.

A work of fiction. Every club, league, ground, firm and person in the game is made up, and so are their names: any likeness to a real one is chance. The game has no connection with the England and Wales Cricket Board, the MCC, or any real league, club, ground or company.