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The Alphabet Cup: A Stupid Tournament
The Alphabet Cup Chapter 1: What the hell is the Alphabet Cup?
While staying up significantly too late a few nights ago, I remembered the fact that the record for the lowest first class score in history is held by a team called 'The Bs' - an occasional cricket team in the 19th Century made up of players with surnames beginning with B.This gave me a (stupid) idea - to select a team for each letter of the alphabet, and play out a tournament between them in Cricket Captain. And to document it here, for the first time in many a year. I feel I have more questions to answer.
Why are you doing this?
I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a big old pandemic on, and I have nothing else to do. I also felt like I needed to write something, and honestly this is all I could think of.
How are you doing this?
On Cricket Captain 2020. 25 teams (we'll get to that) will battle it out in a single-elimination T20 tournament to find out once and for all... which letter of the alphabet has the best cricketers.
How did you pick the teams?
Teams were selected according to strict criteria to stop me having to look through literally every player in the database. I used Cricket Captain's 'surname' to decide which team players were eligible for - it's not necessarily ideal for all name types / cultures but it's 1000x easier for me.
Yup. There are exactly 10 players in the database with a surname starting with Q, and exactly 1 starting with X, so the two tricky letters have joined forces in a joint Q/X team. Frankly I don't hold out much hope for them.
Which teams will you play as?
If there's a notably weaker team in a given match, I'll play as them to attempt to level the playing field a little, and if not I'll draw it randomly. Honestly I don't know if me playing for a team will be a good thing for them.
And the draw?
The first 7 teams out of the hat received first-round byes (due to the number of teams), and the remaining 18 were drawn into 9 first-round matches. These bye-given teams & matches were then randomly drawn into a bracket. Honestly one of team Z or I is going to be in the quarter-finals and that's ridiculous.
So what are the teams?
They've all been selected in advance, but we'll deal with the teams as they play their first matches - I'm looking forward to you shouting at me for my terrible favouritism-led selection policies.
Will you ever finish this?
Who knows! But there's only 24 T20s to play to complete the bracket, so it doesn't seem as stupid as previous things I've failed to finish.
How can I help?
You can't! I'm far too far gone for that.
While staying up significantly too late a few nights ago, I remembered the fact that the record for the lowest first class score in history is held by a team called 'The Bs' - an occasional cricket team in the 19th Century made up of players with surnames beginning with B.This gave me a (stupid) idea - to select a team for each letter of the alphabet, and play out a tournament between them in Cricket Captain. And to document it here, for the first time in many a year. I feel I have more questions to answer.
Why are you doing this?
I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a big old pandemic on, and I have nothing else to do. I also felt like I needed to write something, and honestly this is all I could think of.
How are you doing this?
On Cricket Captain 2020. 25 teams (we'll get to that) will battle it out in a single-elimination T20 tournament to find out once and for all... which letter of the alphabet has the best cricketers.
How did you pick the teams?
Teams were selected according to strict criteria to stop me having to look through literally every player in the database. I used Cricket Captain's 'surname' to decide which team players were eligible for - it's not necessarily ideal for all name types / cultures but it's 1000x easier for me.
- Only current players were considered (anyone eligible for a T20 in Custom Match Series, which doesn't include players retired from T20Is, but does include Kolpak players)
- Anyone who has played a T20I in their career will be chosen over anyone who has not (this essentially means that some of the 'less common' letters have a number of associate players in their teams)
- After that, any remaining positions can be taken up by players who have not played a T20I (in these situations I've done my best to select the best players, but I don't have an in-depth knowledge of everyone!)
- I've also tried to give every team a fair amount of balance (where possible under the above rules) - ideally 6 bowling options, including at least 3 seamers and at least 1 spinner, with at least one keeper.
Yup. There are exactly 10 players in the database with a surname starting with Q, and exactly 1 starting with X, so the two tricky letters have joined forces in a joint Q/X team. Frankly I don't hold out much hope for them.
Which teams will you play as?
If there's a notably weaker team in a given match, I'll play as them to attempt to level the playing field a little, and if not I'll draw it randomly. Honestly I don't know if me playing for a team will be a good thing for them.
And the draw?
The first 7 teams out of the hat received first-round byes (due to the number of teams), and the remaining 18 were drawn into 9 first-round matches. These bye-given teams & matches were then randomly drawn into a bracket. Honestly one of team Z or I is going to be in the quarter-finals and that's ridiculous.
So what are the teams?
They've all been selected in advance, but we'll deal with the teams as they play their first matches - I'm looking forward to you shouting at me for my terrible favouritism-led selection policies.
Will you ever finish this?
Who knows! But there's only 24 T20s to play to complete the bracket, so it doesn't seem as stupid as previous things I've failed to finish.
How can I help?
You can't! I'm far too far gone for that.
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