About SPIN XI
Spin for a real squad. Draft one player. Build an eleven, and find out whether it holds up.
What it is
SPIN XI deals you a real cricket squad from a real season — Mumbai 2019, Sydney 2016/17, Australia 2003 — and you draft one player from it. Then another squad, and another, until you have eleven: four batters, a keeper, two all-rounders and four bowlers. Then your eleven plays a tournament, match by match, and you find out whether the side you built holds up.
It is free, it takes about ten minutes, and there is no sign-up: an account is created for you on your first visit so you can keep a record if you want one.
The four tournaments
- T20 League — fourteen league games, then the playoffs.
- ODI World Cup — nine group games, a semi-final and a final.
- T20 World Cup — short and brutal: seven games, then knockouts.
- Test Championship — twelve Tests over two years, and draws count.
Watching a match
Every match can be watched ball by ball. The score climbs, the strike rotates, wickets land, and a chase counts down what is needed off how many. The scorecard and the replay are the same innings, because one is read off the other.
What it is not
SPIN XI is an independent fan-made cricket draft and tournament simulator. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or associated with any cricket board, league, franchise, player association or ratings provider. Player names, team names, ratings and season data are used for descriptive and editorial purposes only. No official logos, crests or player images are used.
Ratings are computed from publicly published ball-by-ball records of matches that were actually played, and represent this game’s reading of them alone.
Reading further
- How SPIN XI rates a cricketer — the method, and the three times it was wrong.
- How the match engine works — why the ball is bowled before the result is known.
- The archive — 15,270 matches, and what is deliberately left out.
Contact
Questions, corrections and complaints about a rating are all welcome, and the last of those is the most useful. Write to [email protected].
More on how this is built
- How SPIN XI rates a cricketer — Every rating in SPIN XI is computed from ball-by-ball records of matches that were actually played. This is the method, including the three times it was wrong.
- How the match engine works — SPIN XI plays every delivery between the man bowling and the man facing. The score is what comes out, and so is the result. This is how.
- The archive: where every number comes from — SPIN XI is built from 15,270 ball-by-ball match records published by Cricsheet. This is what is in the archive, how it is assembled, and what is deliberately not in it.
- The best seasons in the archive — The highest-rated player-seasons across 15,270 matches of Test, one-day and Twenty20 cricket — and why all-rounders dominate the top of the list.
- Which Twenty20 league is hardest to play in? — Not an opinion. A measurement of what the same players did in different leagues, from ball-by-ball records of every match.
- How to draft a side that actually wins — What ten thousand simulated seasons say about building an eleven in SPIN XI: where the rating misleads you, and what to take when the squad is thin.