2015 Season, MPL

Match Summary: Transformers @ X-Men, July 27 2015

Leave a comment

Transformers @ X-Men, July 27 2015, Ashland Field:

Match Summary:

Transformers won the toss and chose to bat. Seenu’s much awaited season debut for the Transformers, and against the X-Men at that, was launched right away, as he opened the batting with Anil. Seenu, Prasad, Madhu, and Divakaran chipped in with useful runs for their team – making 9(13), 8(15), 8(13), and 6(5) respectively. Anil and Dipesh played key knocks for the Transformers, making 17(13) including two fours, and 15(9) including one four and one six. The Transformers posted 80 runs for the loss of seven wickets in their allotted 14 overs.

Sandeep and Dhruv – 11(10) and 9(13) respectively – provided a strong start as the X-Men began their chase of 81 on the right note. However, a steady stream of wickets kept the Transformers in the game, and the match in the balance. Rohith – 9(7) – played a cameo, as he gave able support to Yashwanth, who was his majestic self. Transformers missed a few opportunities in the field as the match headed for a tight finish.

X-men required seven runs to win in the final over with Yashwanth on strike. However, Chirag, the Transformers’ captain delivered a great over, conceding only five runs – and the Transfomers pulling off a one run win, in a thriller of a match.

 

Transformer are unbeaten this season, with their fifth win a row, and are table toppers in the MPL 2015 – Team Standings, while X-Men stay at second – tied with Justice League on points, but ahead on Net Run Rate (NRR).

Player Spotlight:

Transformers got a strong all-round performance from Anil – 17(13) and 3-0-13-3.

However, Yashwanth stood the tallest among all – 3-0-17-3 and 38(36) not out. Dhruv chipped in the ball and bat – 3-0-14-1 and 9(13).

 

Key Stats:

Transformers played out 43 dot balls – 51.12%. However, factoring in the 5 wides and 1 no-ball bowled by the X-men, the Effective Dot Balls Count (EDBC) is 37 – 44.05%. Five four’s and one six meant 26 runs came in boundaries.

X-Men played out 35 dot balls – 41.67%. Transfomers conceded, an impressive, 1 wide and 1 no-ball alone – the EDBC for the X-Men is 33 – 39.29%. Three four’s  meant 12 runs came in boundaries.

Anil and Yashwanth are the third and fourth batsman this season, after Rohith and Anuj, to get past the 50 run marker. Yashwanth now tops the run-charts with 85. Anil is second with 64 runs.

Player Rankings:

Yashwanth is the highest ranked player, in the Player rankings. Anil, Yeshwanth, Chirag, Koundinya, and Dipesh are second, third, sixth, seventh,  and eighth respectively.

 

Stock Review:

Yashwanth’s and Anil’s stocks are at their season high of $33.88. and $27.82 respectively – up $14.58 and $7.04.

Dhruv, Amar and Sandeep’s stocks also posted significant gains – up by $3.07, $2.48, and $1.97.

Yeshwanth, Chirag, Koundinya, Rohith, Dipesh, Dhruv, and Ganesh K’s stocks are now valued at $18.1, $13.76, $13.76, $11.95, $11.72, $10.79, $10.73 respectively

* Scorecard, and 'Points & Stock Price Reevaluation' links are now available off the Schedule page

(182)

2015 Season, MPL

Match Summary: Incredibles @ Avengers, July 23 2015

Leave a comment

Incredibles @ Avengers, July 23 2015:

Match Summary:

Incredibles won the toss and chose to bat, en route to posting 85/5 in their allotted 14 overs; highest score by any team this season. Looks like a change in management – Nachiket taking over the captaincy from Rahul, who had taken it over from an injured Priyank – was just what the doctor prescribed for the Incredibles.

Avengers put up a fight and a much better show, but yet another top-order collapse (five wickets for 23 runs), resulted in them making only 70/8 – losing by 15 runs in the process.

Incredibles got their first win of the season, and improved to fourth in the team MPL 2015 – Team Standings, while Avengers drop to fifth, tied on points with Incredibles, but behind on Net Run Rate (NRR).

Player Spotlight:

Incredibles got strong performances from Nachiket and Anuj with the bat – 28(32) and 28(17) respectively – and Sachin, Chaitanya, and Sriram with the ball – 3-0-13-3, 3-0-12-2, 3-0-12-1 respectively.

Kunal and Ankit S stood out with the ball for Avengers – 3-0-13-2 and 3-0-10-0, respectively. Ankit D,  Ankit S, Ono, Ganesh I, and Prabakar, played key knocks for the Avengers, but the pressure exerted by the Incredibles’ bowlers proved too much – 9(12), 8(14), 11(16), 9(7), and 11(14) respectively.

Key Stats:

Incredibles played out 39 dot balls – 46.43%. However, factoring in the 7 wides and 4 no-balls bowled by the Avengers, the Effective Dot Balls Count (EDBC) is 28 – 33.33%. Three four’s and two sixes meant 24 runs came in boundaries.

Avengers played out 48 dot balls – 57.14%. However, factoring in the 10 wides and 6 no-balls bowled by the Incredibles, the EDBC is 28 – 38.1%. Three four’s  meant 12 runs came in boundaries.

Anuj is the second batsman this season, after Rohith, to get past the 50 run marker.

Player Rankings:

Ankit S and Chaitanya, on the back of consistent strong showings with the ball, move to second and tenth overall respectively, in the Player rankings.

Priyank is eighth overall on the back of his superman like performance in the Incredibles’ season opener, and still the top-ranked batsman.

Stock Review:

Sachin, Anuj, Nachiket, and Kunal’s stocks posted significant gains – up by $10.69, $7.93, $6.93, and $5.7 respectively.

Ankit S, Chaitanya, Sriram, Nachiket, Anuj, Sachin and Kunal’s stocks are now valued at $17.66, $17.36, $16.48, $16.08, $12.99, $10.87, and $10.87 respectively.

* Scorecard, and 'Points & Stock Price Reevaluation' links are now available off the Schedule page

(217)

2015 Season, MPL

Selector 2.0

1 Comment

Background

The fantasy cricket game ‘Selector‘ launched last year, had a pretty successful reception. It received some critical feedback, along with sparking off a coding competition to solve the same in your own choice of programming language – it is a knapsack problem.

For MPL 2015, some minor enhancements were made – porting to the new website – and a new feature added, the ability to select a ‘Power Player’.

Power Player

There have been improvements made for the MPL 2015 version of Selector.

The biggest is the introduction of ‘Power Player’. After selecting your squad of 14, within your purse of $110, you can select one out of those 14 players as your ‘Power Player’.

The ‘Power Player’ will earn you double points through the tournament.

You can change your ‘Power Player’ (and your squad) as many times as you like. As the first ball of MPL 2015 is bowled, your squad and ‘Power Player’ will be locked for the duration of the MPL..

Please note that it is mandatory to select a ‘Power Player’. You will not be able to save your squad/changes to your squad, if you don’t have a ‘Power Player’.

Planned Enhancements

Other enhancements that will come online shortly are

  1. View the team of other Selectors once MPL has started
  2. View the points contributed by each player to a given team

Known Bugs/Limitations

The following are limitations/bugs that I am aware of, and working on fixing the same:

  1. As you select player’s while initially forming, and later while updating your squad, the players added to the drop-down are not sorted alphabetically.Note: This is only applicable as you select players. When retrieving your saved team, the list of players in the ‘Power Player’ drop-down, as presented in an alphabetical manner. FIXED
  2. After selecting and saving the team, when you revisit the page, the previously selected ‘Power Player’ isn’t selected/highlighted.Note: The same is stored in the database, along with your squad of 14. This is only a display related issue.
    Workaround: If you do make any changes to your squad, please re-select your ‘Power Player’ prior to committing the changes via the ‘Update Squad’ button.     FIXED
  3. After selecting and saving the team, when you revisit the page, and *only* re-select the ‘Power Player’, the ‘Update Squad’ button isn’t enabled. 

    Workaround: You will need to deselect and re-select a player in your squad of 14, along with selecting a ‘Power Player’, to enable the ‘Update Squad’ button.

(303)

2015 Season

MPL 2015 Auction

Leave a comment

The MPL 2015 Auction will be held on June 17, 2015 (Wed) at 6PM.

Out of 71 registered players, 15 players (3 per team) were retained, thereby leaving 56 players in the auction pool.

Here are the rules:

a) All players will be presented in a random order in the auction (Round 1).

b) The player’s base price has been set to his average stock price from last year’s MPL. For new players, the base price will start at 1.

c) Teams will openly bid for the players. If multiple teams show interest at base price, then teams have to outbid one another for the player. If no team is willing to bid at the base price, then the player will go unsold (i.e. will be placed on HOLD).

d) There will be a cap on the amount that a captain can bid in a round based on the balance and the number of vacant spots in his team. For example, if a captain has $60 left and has 11 (out of 14) vacant spots in his team, then the Max. bid that he can make in the current round will be: Balance – No. of vacant spots + 1 ,which in this case will be 60 – 11 + 1 = 50. 

e) If two teams have the same Max. bid, then the team that races first to the Max. bid will get that player.

f) After all the players are presented in Round 1, the unsold players will be randomly presented with their base price reduced by 50% (with a minimum of 1)  in Round 2. Players can again go unsold, which will then further reduce their base price by 50% in the next round. Team balance, max. bid value and list of assigned players will be shown on the screen.

g) As there are 71 players, 4 teams will have 14 players each and the 5th team will have 15 players.

Pre-auction statistics:

Each team started off with $110. Here are their balances after they retained 3 players:

Team Balance
Avengers $78
Xmen $65
Justice League $82
Incredibles $58
Transformers $62

List of players available in the auction pool: MPL_Auction_Players

(275)

2014 Season, MPL

MPL 2014 – Player review from a stock perspective

Leave a comment

The ‘Fantasy Cricket Stock Exchange (FCSE)‘ in place for the past two seasons, has served a two pronged role – primarily a fantasy cricket platform, and secondarily towards calculating how much each team is charged for the players it retains.

The formula for re-evaluating the stock prices has come under the scanner during the MPL 2014 season, in particular owing to the volatility that the stock prices of some players have been through.

I have taken the feedback received into consideration, and will be updating the formula over the 2015 and 2016 seasons. We have not retro-actively applied any changes to the stock prices for the MPL 2014 season – the formula and the volatility was uniform across all teams, and thus benefits and hurts all teams equally.

The ‘Three Musketeers’ were the three members retained by each team, from among their MPL 2013 season squads for the MPL 2014 season. The ‘Offer Price’ for members of the ‘Three Musketeers’ for each team, for the MPL 2014 season, was the average stock price for the respective player from the MPL 2013 season. The other players in each squad, were obtained in the MPL 2014 Player’s Auction.

As we review performance of players in MPL 2014 from a stock perspective, captured below are some of the key data-points for each stock

  • ‘Offer Price‘: Price paid for a  player’s service at the “Player’s Auction” for MPL 2014
  • ‘Closing‘: Stock price for the given player after his last match in MPL 2014
  • ‘Low‘: Lowest price point for this stock
  • ‘Peak‘: Highest price point for this stock
  • ‘Average‘: Average price point for this stock
  • ‘*’: Indicates a player who was part of “Fantastic Four” of the respective teams in MPL 2014

Continue reading MPL 2014 – Player review from a stock perspective →

(285)

MPL

MPL 2015: Rules, and Player Retentions

Leave a comment

MPL 2015 will continue to mirror MPL 2014 in that we will stick with five teams.

Adding a sixth team was under consideration if we could get 78 (or close to it) registrations prior to the auction. However, with ground permit being a concern, we decided to stick with five teams, and hence also close registration once we had 70 paid registrations.

MPL 2015 Captains

Ankit, Chirag, Kaushik, Priyank and Rohith.

As the leaders of your respective super-hero clans from MPL 2014, you have one last duty. That duty is to transfer the title of leader (‘captain’ in the cricketing world) to someone on your squad from MPL 2014. You have till end of day Monday – June 8th – to announce the new captain.

Please note, that you may choose to stay on as the leader of your super-hero clan for another MPL season.

Player Retention

Continue reading MPL 2015: Rules, and Player Retentions →

(259)

2014 Season, NECA

MCC-1 @ Challengers: NECA 2014, Week 2: Match Report

Leave a comment

This was our first away game for this season. I will quote Ono’s mini match report first and then add my notes later.

Ono:

We went into this game with a lot of uncertainties. First of all we did not know if the game is going to happen, we did not have a full quota of bowlers, the pitch was weird (reminded me of the Grafton field) and our confidence was at all time low after the series of losses starting the season. Last week’s loss was particularly painful.

Given all these uncertainties, we still came out winning the game. Kudos to everyone in team because everyone played their part and showed great positive energy from the first ball. The batsmen continuously paced their innings and the team innings to make sure we were at a good foundation at the 17 over mark without a loss of many wickets. This helped the final over bursts to reach 100. We started our bowling by taking a wicket in the first over and from that point on we made sure the pressure was continuously on by taking regular wickets. Catches were held and extra runs were mostly avoided. The main bowlers and the fielders worked around the part time bowlers to provide the right amount of support and help them get through the remaining overs. Overall, a great win by the whole team.

The first thing we realized when we stepped on the field was, the boundaries were really short. We knew our bowlers had to bowl with pinpoint precision in order to not give away easy boundaries. Rahul said they had at least two good all rounders who we needed to keep in check. We won the toss and decided to bat first since chasing was a recent nightmare from the previous week’s game. Ashish and Raghu opened and the plan was to keep it busy with singles. Uncertain bounce on a slightly damp field did Raghu in while Ashish was still going busy at the other end. Anuj came in for Raghu and looked to be in his own zone. On some occasions he was going for his shots and getting beaten but he stuck to his natural game and that paid good dividends. I had no doubt his MPL stock was going to rise even further (and it did, he was the most expensive buy at the auction). Ashish got out paving way to Ono and Sandeep who came in and gave Anuj some company. We were scoring at maybe 4-5 an over but were still missing that punch to get us a score above 100. Rahul came in and muscled two huge sixes to give us exactly that. He got out and Suresh came in and hit another six off the first ball he faced and we ended up with a good score of 107(?). For our bowling, we were still uncertain whether it was a good score since the boundaries were so short. Swarooph and Suresh opened the bowling. Swarooph took 2 wickets in 2 overs and had the batting side on the back foot right from the get go. In came their two main players. GK was called upon next and it looked like one of the players was trying to target him. He took up the challenge and even got his wicket with a great over. Rahul came in to bowl and was struggling with his line initially. In the middle overs, we had let the opposing team somewhat get back into the game despite having them 5 or 6 down. But with an ‘incredible’ spirit and effort Rahul found his line and length back and was effective in his later overs. Suresh took 2 wickets in 2 balls in his last over and the match was almost over. We did have some concerns for our fifth bowler. We really did not have a true fifth bowler. We gave Anuj a go hoping his golden touch with the bat will help with the ball as well. This did not go according to the plan entirely with some extras and short balls. Anuj was a little under the pressure knowing the circumstances of the fifth bowler. We calmed him down and asked him to kiss (keep it simple stupid!). He finished that over strong. We then called Chaitanya to lend his services and he delivered 2(?) overs beautifully even got one (?) wicket. In the end, we were on the winning side because good solid batting and great execution while bowling. Special mention goes to the fielders on the boundaries. They were dormant for the most part but were quick to throw in their fielding efforts and grab on to catches with good concentration (Anoop). If at all we were beaten in one department, it was cheering. The opposing team had one girl cheering them through the entirety of the match even if her side was 9 down and going to lose.

(232)

2014 Season, NECA

MCC-1 @ BGSC – NECA 2014, Week 3 : Report

Leave a comment

We played in Wrentham, home ground for our Eagles sponsored Mathworks MSCL team. We won the toss and decided to bat since it worked well last game. Nachiket and Ashish opened and the idea was to keep it busy with single, double, single, double [sic, quote from last week match]. We were busy right off the first ball and kept it going with a target if 20 in 5 overs. We beat it and in the meanwhile lost Ashish to some miscommunication during the awesome running between the wickets. Pritish went in next and showed some aggressiveness before getting out. Priyank joined Nachi and kept the Incredibles, sorry, MCC 1 going well. Priyank got caught behind and Amol went in. He had a streaky innings with a bunch of dropped catches but mistimed a ball to get caught on the offside. Kaushik went in and was caught off a mistimed shot as well (?). Suddenly we had lost 3 wickets in a considerably short time so we wanted a good partnership since Nachiket was going strong. Nachi discarded loose balls with disdain and nothing seemed to trouble him. Enter Onomitra. He played a good innings mostly thanks to captain Rahul urging him to go for shots (to Ono’s annoyance). They finished the innings well with two double digit run overs and ended up with 117. Ono had 18*(23) and Nachi 62*(54). Our bowling plan was simple. We wanted to avoid short balls (info was that the opposing team had good muscle and will go for their shots) at all cost and try to not give easy singles (which was our strength during our batting). Swarooph and Kaushik opened the bowling. They bowled two overs each and after giving away some streaky singles had already the side down 3-4 wickets. Sureshwar and Rahul came in next and kept it tight and kept pegging wickets away. Amol joined the bowling party and showed his bowling form to the Avengers captain Ankit who took the WK duties after Ono pulled something when going for a reaction catch. We knew we had the habit of letting teams come back in after a strong bowling start so, we kept our focus and finished the job to get a good victory. P.S: Nachi continued his form and scored ~25* to win the afternoon Eagles game as well. So he needs >10 runs in the repeat of last year’s final in MPL to score a 100 for this week.

(278)

MPL

Introducing ‘Selector’

Leave a comment

What is the ‘Selector’?

The ‘Selector‘ is yet another game, in our now growing arsenal of Fantasy Cricket games.

Each ‘Selector’ get $110, the same amount of money as the five MPL teams, to form a squad (or team) of exactly 14 players – your own MPL team. You will form your team of 14 players from the pool of 70 players in MPL 2014 – those retained, and those who were part of the auction.

You select,  or purchase, a player for the price that a given MPL team paid for the services of the same player. This applies to players bought through the auction, and players retained by the respective teams.

You can make as many changes as you’d like to your team of 14 – dropping and adding players while staying within your purse limit of $110 – heading up until 5:30 PM (EDT) on the day of the first match in the MPL 2014 season – the season opener between Incredibles and X-Men, on June 24th. There is no charge to make changes to your team.

Post 5:30 PM (EDT) on June 24th, your team is locked for the duration of the MPL 2014 season. You will not be able to make any further changes.

The goal here is to determine how good you are at putting together a MPL team. This will be judged based purely on the sum of the cumulative points earned by each member of the team that you put together, through the duration of the MPL season.

Standings and Leader-board

We will publish a cumulative leader-board that will reflect each person playing ‘Selector’, and his or her team’s current cumulative point total.

We will strive to provide a breakdown of the same on a daily basis, to throw light on whose team got how many points for a given MPL match.

FAQ

There is no concept of a captain of your MPL team – a player who could earn you double points.

There is no ‘starting XI’ for a given MPL match or a given week of MPL matches. If all 14 players on your squad play during a match, or a given week of matches, you will earn points for every one of them.

(1149)

MPL

How the ‘Three Musketeers’ of the ‘MPL 2014 Avengers’ were formed

Leave a comment

Rewind 2013 – MPL final, which the Avengers were not in. Each team played their part and had their moments. Each team was punctuated by terrific highs and lows. But, one team stood at the last spot, like they wrote a script of their own. It was temperament and decision making taking a back seat, that took apart an in-form team to the last spot. As if that wasn’t enough, the captain didn’t even cross the double digit score of his own. To a certain degree, such effort brought the “spirit to fight until you prevail and impossible is nothing” down to zero. A player, with no cricketing mind, Ankit can only be punished in one way – captain the team again.

As the season progressed, Avengers were slowly but surely been identified as “Losing XI”. This was evident from my performance. In spite of sheer brilliance from multiple members of the Avengers squad:

  1. Amol scored the most runs in the MPL 2013.
  2. He also had the highest inning score of 49* in MPL 2013.
  3. Amol shows up as one of the top 10 players in MPL 2013.
  4. Vijay appeared in top 10 wicket taking bowler’s list.
  5. Vivek and Vijay were the 2nd best in fielding points.

Avengers now needed a leader, one who goes through the whole thing again, who might learn from my mistakes. And who better to do so, than myself, the first Avenger.

When the decision was made that a new team will be formed, I was really excited at the prospect of probably not coming last, but then they announced the team and it made that dream a little hard.

Knowing that I will be leading Avengers again, I wanted Amol in the team, but was not sure if Amol wanted to be an Avenger. Once that question was out of the way, Amol was confirmed as the second Avenger.

Now it was between Anand, Vivek and Adai. However, Anand pointed out that Vivek and Adai would be a better choice for their role as all rounders. Adai didn’t play almost the entire last season, but I know he can be a great guy to have on the team. Similar to Vivek, he can bat as well as bowl. And folks who have played with both Vivek and Adai know what I am talking about. In the end, since Adai’s name starts with “A” as well – I decided to go for “A”dai to join the “A”vengers along with “A”mol and “A”nkit.

(315)