Engine
The sim gets better in numbered updates. Every finished match remembers which engine played it, so old results never change under a new one. More in how it works.
Updates (95)
1582026-09-13Current
Stadium bar for major cricket moves from twenty-five T20s to twenty: Visakhapatnam, McLean Park Napier, Oakland Coliseum and Carrara Oval join the catalogue. Same corpus as 157, venue reads rebuilt.
1572026-09-13
Stadium audit. Five grounds that Cricsheet files under two names are one ground now: Sussex at Hove, Pune under its old sponsor name, R Premadasa with and without the dot, Sir Vivian Richards under Antigua and North Sound, and a Daren Sammy typo. A ground now qualifies for the catalogue on major cricket alone, twenty-five top-league or full-member T20s, so Pune, Hambantota, Eden Park, Bay Oval, Manuka, DY Patil, Lucknow, the WACA, Dunedin, Brabourne, Dambulla and Dharamsala join. Associate club grounds with no major T20 behind them stay in the data for the franchises already on them but are unlisted for new picks. Six grounds now wear the name people use: Utilita Bowl, the Gabba, Marvel Stadium, Optus Stadium, The Oval. Same corpus as 156; venue reads rebuilt on the merged records.
1562026-09-12
Cricsheet pull of 2026-09-12: 51 new matches since the 4 September pull, 38 of them T20s (CPL and European T20 Premier League rounds of 2 to 9 September, the Sri Lanka Major Clubs T20, Africa Continental Cup, Namibia tri-series). No old match withdrawn, so the rest of the corpus is exactly as it was. Every rating carries the new balls: a player's last fortnight in real cricket now counts, this season full and each year back 15 percent less, the same recency rule as always. Pool refreshed on the same corpus.
1552026-09-11
Catches land where real catches land. In the powerplay the catch is in the ring, a drive on the up to cover or a leading edge to mid-off, not a slog to the rope; through the middle overs it goes deep, and mostly to long-on and deep midwicket rather than deep cover or third man; at the death the ring gets its share back. As wickets fall the keeper takes more, the slips are gone, mid-on empties and long-on fills. Nearly every catch now names the fielder. Same study found that a collapse does not change how a batter gets out, only where the ball goes.
1542026-09-11
Commentary talks about the ball the way real commentary does, phase by phase. Real feeds name a slower ball on one powerplay delivery in thirteen and one middle-overs delivery in twelve; ours almost never did outside the death. Short balls come up more, the odd yorker appears before the death, and at the death the bowler is credited for a length ball as often as real, with a few fewer yorkers. The word pressure itself is rare in real death commentary, under one line in a hundred whatever the ask, and ours said it twice as often. The same study found no bowler-under-pressure trait to build: a bowler's economy edge is the same in every phase, every chase state and both innings, so the cards already carry it.
1532026-09-11
A bowler nobody has seen bowl is not an average bowler. Arms with under 150 balls in the majors used to shrink to the league mean, which is a frontline mean, so an unknown seamer picked up in the auction bowled like a fifth-year pro. Now he starts from what unknown arms really do (18% fewer wickets per ball, a run an over more, a boundary every fourth ball), his own record counts five times more than a pro's would, and until he has earned 100 overs at this level no lucky fortnight can rate him above that class; a bad start can rate him below it. The captain still uses him where his record says he bowls.
1522026-09-11
The wicket that follows a wicket is a different wicket. Real cricket: on the very next ball it is bowled, lbw or a run-out far more often than a catch, and when it is a catch it is a nick to the keeper or slip, or a pull that doesn't get up, not a slog to long-on. Ours drew the same wicket every time. Now the new man plays back or across, the pair mixes up a run, and the commentary tells it that way for the first three balls after a fall. Middle overs and the death mostly; the powerplay was already close.
1512026-09-10
After a wicket, the batters play themselves back in. For three balls the partner scores a fifth under his usual and the new man nearly half under, then both ease back over the next three, and it is the same whether the side is cruising or chasing fourteen an over in the middle overs. Ours kept swinging the very next ball. The last four overs are untouched: there the ask decides, and a man walking in needing four off two still swings.
1502026-09-10
A wicket calms the over, and the innings asks who is at the crease. In the first sixteen overs real sides shut shop after losing a man: the new batter blocks, the partner stops attacking, the next wicket in that over comes a quarter less often and a third one half as often. Ours kept attacking, so three- and four-wicket overs in the middle came twice as often as they should. At the death it is the other way round: the sprint makes a third wicket in the over more likely, and ours had that too soft. Four-wicket overs now live where they do in real cricket, in the last four overs. And in a first innings, a side four or six down rebuilds: real teams score twelve and twenty-eight percent slower in the middle overs after losing four and six, and at the death a batter still under ten balls swings fifteen percent less than a set pair, whoever he is. The same player at three down and set keeps his full swing. Sixty-plus scores from number eight and below were coming at twice the real rate.
1492026-09-09
Super overs follow the playing conditions. When a super over is level, the sides swap: whoever batted second in the last one bats first in the next. A batter out in any super over is done for the rest of them, and the arm that bowled a side's last super over sits the next one out. Rounds repeat until someone wins, no three-round cap and no silent tie. And the super over now plays like the last over of a T20, not the twelfth: a boundary every four or five balls and a wicket every seven, both wickets gone in a quarter of them, the way the real ones go. Ours had been knocking singles.
1482026-09-07
A chase is paced like a chase. Real sides chasing at under eleven an over score slower than they do batting first: they take what is on offer and keep wickets, and it is the anchors who slow down, not the hitters. Ours batted a cruising chase at full first-innings pace, then slowed at the death, where real sides finish fast. Once the ask climbs past eleven, real sides go harder than ours did, hitters most of all; a side needing fifteen an over in the middle overs now scores near the rate real IPL sides do, and two-hundred-plus chases are won a little more often. Measured against every major league since 2022 and against the IPL alone, by phase and by ask; the wicket side, set in engines 145 and 147, is untouched.
1472026-09-07
A steep chase costs wickets the way a real one does. Engine 145 turned the wicket pressure up when the ask climbed past fourteen an over, but had to stop short of the real curve because a gate built on the sim's own mix of chase states tripped first. The gate now reads each chase state against its real counterpart, and the pressure is set where the real numbers sit: a chase at fifteen to seventeen an over loses a wicket about as often as it does in the majors.
1462026-09-07
The last over is batted like the last over. A set batter with a tail-ender for company used to take the single late in every over to keep the strike — right in the eighteenth, wrong in the twentieth, where there is no next over and real batters refuse it on every ball. Fixed. The commentary now says what real commentary says about the strike: kept, refused, handed back. And a gone chase is played out for consolation runs, not "pride" — a word that appears on none of forty-two thousand real lines.
1452026-09-07
The ask bites like it does in real chases. In real top-flight chases the chance of losing a wicket on any ball doubles between an ask of eight an over and fifteen, climbs a little more to seventeen, and then stays there — a side that is four down does not get a discount. The sim's climb was half as steep and it went easy on sides four and five down, which is why chases at eleven to seventeen an over kept their heads when real ones lose them. Measured ball by ball across every major league since 2022, and held there; a dead chase is still seen out the way engine 138 made it.
1442026-09-07
The first over and the last over read like the first over and the last over. Real first-over commentary is about the new ball moving — swinging in, nipping away — and batters seeing it off; ours barely mentioned the ball and defended a third as often. Real last-over commentary is full balls hit clean, wickets hooking or to the slower ball, and singles that were never timed; ours edged its fours, quoted swing on sixes and told last-over singles like any other. Measured against the same three seasons of real ball-by-ball text as the free hits, over by over.
1432026-09-07
Batters play the situation. In real top-flight chases since 2022, the safe batter's edge is a cruising thing: with the ask under eight an over he is dismissed forty percent less often than the loose one, and with the ask steep that gap halves — everybody has to swing. The sim gave every batter the same edge at every ask. Now a batter's identity is compressed toward the field as the ask climbs and widens a little when the chase is comfortable. Tested by batter class held out on 2025-26; the same study showed no batter carries a private clutch or choke beyond his ability, so nobody gets one.
1422026-09-07
Collapses now follow the ask. Real chasing sides cruising at under eight an over almost never lose three wickets in an over; the sim did it two-thirds more often than real, and when the ask was steep it piled up only half as often as real sides do. Measured across every top-flight league since 2022, not just the IPL, and by batter quality: good batters were already falling at real rates ball by ball. What changed is the pile-up after a wicket: comfortable chases settle, steep ones stack.
1412026-09-07
The free hit reads like the real thing. Real free-hit dots are the bowler's win — a yorker dug out, a bouncer swayed under — or a swing and a miss; real singles are mistimed slogs, and one in six is a catch that counts for nothing. The words "free hit" now land where a commentator puts them, at the payoff, not stapled to every ball. The swing itself was refit too: sixes on free hits ran a third above real, fours a shade under; both now sit at top-flight rates.
1402026-09-06
Every batter's edge in fours and sixes over the field is now about fifteen percent smaller — the same fifteen percent off every batter, so sides built on boundary hitters give back a little more than sides built on accumulators. Real top-flight T20 has never seen a 300 total and sees a 150 once in fifteen thousand innings; the sim was minting both. They are gone, and set batters still score at real rates. Measured held out on 2025 matches.
1392026-09-06
A batter with only a short top-flight record no longer hits fours and sixes as if that record were proven. The engine now knows how many major-league balls stand behind each player; a hundred-ball record's boundary edge counts at about seventy percent, a four-hundred-ball one in full. Established players are untouched. Measured held out on 2025 matches; on a live league it removed the outlier 190s from thin-record hitters.
1382026-09-06
When a chase is already gone, batters now see it out instead of swinging at everything, and a batter who is set bats for his not-out. Measured against real IPL 2024+ and top-flight T20 since 2022: a dead chase loses fewer wickets and scores at the rate real ones do.
1372026-09-06
Every batter's edge over the field is now a tenth smaller. Held-out real matches showed the gap between the best and the rest is narrower than the record suggests, for well-known and little-known players alike. Hundreds now come at the real rate and the very biggest totals a little less often.
1362026-09-06
A set batter in the last five overs now plays the innings he is in. Setting a total, he takes the risks a settled batter takes at the death and is dismissed the way real ones are; chasing, he is dismissed less. Measured against real IPL 2024+ ball by ball, where the sim had the two innings the wrong way round.
1352026-09-06
A reverse sweep in the commentary now ends the way it does in real cricket: about a quarter reach the fence, a third are beaten or hit the pad, a third go for a single, and one in twelve costs the wicket. Before, the feed only ever described the ones that went for four.
1342026-09-06
A wicket in a chase now sounds like what it means: in a tight chase the commentary names the moment and the swing, in a chase that is already won or already lost it stays flat, and the same stock line no longer greets every dismissal.
1332026-09-05
A hot start no longer buys a proven hitter's ceiling: how much a batter's boundary rate can climb above the league now needs more top-flight balls behind it, so a few hundred explosive deliveries read as promising rather than settled while long careers keep everything they have earned.
1322026-09-05
A set batter is no longer safer than he should be: from the fifteenth ball on, his chance of getting out now sits close to the modern IPL's, so the sim stops minting scores the real game has never seen.
1312026-09-05
A batter who has faced thirty balls is no longer scored like one who has faced fifteen: the settling curve gained a fourth step per phase, read from the real game rather than assumed.
1302026-09-05
A rating has to be earned: a batter's edge over the league is now bounded by how many top-flight balls stand behind it, so a hot hundred balls read as a hot hundred balls, not as a career.
1292026-09-04
Fresh data, a new league, and a stricter door. Every rating is rebuilt on Cricsheet through 2 September 2026: the rest of the CPL and the first ten matches of the new European T20 Premier League, which now counts as a major alongside the IPL, BBL, PSL and the rest. Fifteen players join the pool: eight from the ETPL sides (Mark Watt, Richie Berrington, Paul van Meekeren, Michael Levitt, Vikramjit Singh, Jai Moondra, Matt Hollard, Jon-Jon Smuts), six from the CPL, and Newman Nyamhuri off Zimbabwe's T20Is. Club cricket no longer keeps anyone current: a player stays in the pool only while he plays a real league or international cricket, so seven names whose recent games were club or inter-provincial matches move to the departed list. Form moves with the cricket: Hetmyer, Brevis and Pollard up after the CPL, Nortje and Santner sharper with the ball; a quiet CPL costs Ashwin.
1282026-09-04
Batters settle again. A new batter's first five balls score like a new batter's (strike rate 123, not 133), the sixth to fourteenth ball a touch slower, and the batter who has faced thirty or more is the one who opens up, the way the last three IPL seasons read. A 250-plus first innings stays at about one in seventeen, which is where the last three IPL seasons sit (12 of 211 since 2024). Nothing changes for a batter who was already scoring at his real rate: Suryavanshi still strikes at 216, because the real one strikes at 229.
1272026-09-04
A beaten ball says so, and a death-overs dot is an attacking dot. When the batter plays and misses, the line now reads beaten, past the edge or a swing and a miss, instead of a phrase that could mean anything. In the last five overs a dot is a yorker jammed out or a big swing that finds the fielder, not a forward defensive; a ball down the leg side gets worked or flicked, never defended. The bowler's nod ("Respect for the bowler", "Watchful") rode a third of all dots and now rides one in twenty, the way real feeds do. Nothing about the simulation changes: the same balls are beaten, the feed just says it plainly.
1262026-09-04
Commentary that reads like the real thing. Lines now describe the ball and the shot before the shout, the way a live feed does, instead of shouting first. Wickets say what the batter was trying and pass a verdict. A collapse is called by its scoreline, not the same sentence seven times. A bowler 'finishes' only when his overs are done, and nobody calls a chase hopeless in the third over of a first innings. Every factual claim in a line is now checked against the ball it describes, across every match card, before an update ships.
1252026-09-03
Chasing sides stop collapsing in bunches. When a wicket falls in an over, the next batter's first balls were carrying every pressure term at once, so three wickets in six balls happened almost twice as often as in real T20 chases, even with the side cruising. Now one wicket in an over makes the next one harder to take, the way real batters see an over out after a blow. Wickets per over are unchanged; only the pile-ups thin out. Measured against 13,777 real IPL overs.
1242026-09-03
The captain now reads his bowlers' records, not just their habits. Who bowls the 20th is the best death bowler in the attack, judged on what he actually does in the last overs, rather than whoever has bowled the most death overs in his career. His last over is saved for the 20th, and one expensive powerplay over stops counting against him thirteen overs later. Every phase gets the same eye: a bowler is rated on his powerplay, middle and death records separately when the captain weighs him for that phase.
1232026-09-01
Reviews now go to the right umpire. Batters and fielding captains burn their reviews where DRS actually lives: lbw calls, and the edge through to the keeper. Run outs and stumpings go upstairs too, but as the officials' own line-call check, told in soft-signal words. A clean catch in the ring or at the rope never gets reviewed any more, because nobody in real cricket reviews one. Rates measured against three seasons of real ball-by-ball commentary, dismissal by dismissal.
1222026-08-31
Tail-enders now bat like themselves. A bowler who has poked at 107 for his whole career no longer launches at 180 in the last overs — his own record sets how hard he swings, a genuine hitter down the order still swings like one, and every tail-ender carries a real batter's risk when he walks in. Measured from every top-flight number-nine-and-below innings since 2021. And mystery spin is mysterious again: a batter who has never faced a chinaman plays him from the scorebook for his first dozen balls — the caution real batters show, fading once he's read him. Kohli has; a debutant hasn't.
1212026-08-31
Batters can be rattled: a couple of false shots in quick succession make a new batter more likely to fall next ball, and a set batter shrugs it off — measured from a quarter-million balls of real commentary. The feed now narrates the very beaten balls the engine drew.
1202026-08-31
The commentary box remembers what it just said: no line repeats inside a match until its pool has had a full turn, dots and running singles carry the second sentence real feeds give them, and the death overs stop shouting — the chase equation lands on every final-over ball and the boundaries, not every delivery, and the pressure captions thin out to something like a real broadcast. Nothing was invented: every phrase was already mined from real commentary; the feed just deals them the way a commentator does.
1192026-08-31
A batter's game is now read separately from the situations he happened to play it in. Cells earned mostly in late-innings cameos no longer replay that late-innings licence at the top of the order; getting set depends on when you arrive, and batting a career finisher first drop does not hand him an opener's survival — with no powerplay record he is priced by the game he has actually played. Fewer runaway fifties from late entrants and promoted finishers, a few more from the top order.
1172026-08-30
The ball-by-ball commentary learns to read like a real feed: lines composed from the delivery, the shot and the field, wickets told as moments, and death overs that sound like the death. Broadcasts breathe a little slower to carry it. No ball outcomes changed.
1162026-08-30
Batters with a short top-flight record get out a little sooner. Their scoring is unchanged.
1152026-08-30
Chasing sides that fall behind now protect their wickets and fall short, instead of swinging until they're bowled out.
1132026-08-29
The engine learns how much to trust a short record. A bowler's wicket count over a handful of games now counts for far less than his economy — the corpus shows early wicket bursts rarely repeat while run-rates do — and a thin bowling record leans on what bowlers of his type usually do rather than the league average. Auction tiers and base prices do not move; the hidden ranking that guides bots and auto-picks is a little more cautious about players the data has barely seen.
1102026-08-19
The engine catches up on 140 fresh matches (the CPL and Hundred seasons, the LPL finish and the Sri Lankan club circuit) and every player rating relearns from them. Six new names join the auction pool, five of them straight off the CPL.
1092026-08-19
The commentary reads cleaner: every line re-punctuated for the broadcast voice. No ball outcomes changed.
1082026-08-15
Tail-enders bat like their own record: a bowler who has never hit a six stops launching match-winning heaves, and proven hitters keep hitting.
1072026-08-15
A dying over is not a massacre: doomed chases stop collapsing five-down in the final over and go down the way real ones do.
1062026-08-15
Chasing sides protect the wickets the equation needs: death-overs run-outs now lean to the first innings, where setters sell wickets for twos.
1052026-08-14
Run-outs pick fresh batters and spare the set ones, matching how real mix-ups actually happen.
1042026-08-14
Dead chases go resigned: once the ask is beyond anyone, the commentary stops ringing the equation like a thriller.
1032026-08-14
Batters who have really faced left-arm wrist spin now carry that record; everyone else plays it like the unknown it is.
1022026-08-14
Decks bite again: bowler-friendly grounds take more wickets and roads take fewer, about two wickets a match between the extremes.
1012026-08-14
Left-arm wrist spin becomes its own art: the chinaman is no longer just another slow left-armer.
1002026-08-08
Manual super overs go all the way: pick your opening pair too.
992026-08-08
Losing chases die swinging: no more tidy two-down defeats.
982026-08-08
Manual picks grow a batting half: pick who walks in after a wicket, plus both super-over calls.
972026-08-07
The best death bowler is saved for the 17th and 20th, and a second trusted arm shares the load.
962026-08-06
Tail-enders bat like tail-enders: no more borrowed six-hitting.
952026-08-06
A bowler bleeding runs loses his next over sooner; powerplay bowlers rest longer.
942026-08-06
The engine catches up on 147 fresh matches (the new LPL season and the Blast and MLC run-ins) and every player rating relearns from them.
932026-08-05
Owners can call the bowling changes themselves. Picks stay within the laws of the game; matches without manual picks play out exactly as before.
922026-08-04
Closers keep two overs back for the end, and the last of them waits for the 20th.
912026-08-03
Part-time overs need a matchup reason, not just a fresh arm.
902026-08-03
Captains keep the death overs for frontline bowlers.
892026-08-03
The commentary knows a must-score ball when it sees one.
882026-08-03
The right bowlers take the new ball.
872026-08-01
Part-time bowling now works like real cricket.
862026-08-01
Commentary learns each batter's real shots.
852026-08-01
Fielding arrives: death-over run outs, dropped catches.
842026-08-01
Captains save their best bowler for the final over.
832026-08-01
The broadcast tracks the chase ball by ball.
822026-08-02
Leg-byes and no-balls behave like real cricket.
812026-08-02
Tail-enders protect the set batter.
802026-08-02
Super overs send the big hitters.
792026-08-02
The last over goes to the closer more often.
782026-08-02
Unknown batters stop batting like stars.
772026-08-02
Bowlers who barely bowl in real life stay rare here.
762026-08-01
Bowlers who can't bat, bat like it.
752026-08-01
Commentary stops repeating itself.
742026-08-01
Wickets read like a real scorecard.
732026-07-31
Small grounds calm down.
722026-07-31
Grounds judged by their pitches, not their guest lists.
712026-07-31
Extreme grounds play to their reputation.
702026-07-31
Seamers come back for second spells.
692026-07-31
Research only: nothing changes on the field.
682026-07-30
Tidy-up. No cricket changes.
672026-07-30
Saved-up spinners bowl the death the way real captains use them.
662026-07-30
Part-timers can bowl, but never count as one of your five bowlers.
652026-07-30
Seventy bowlers got their proper styles. Batting records vs pace and spin got sharper.
642026-07-30
Opening bowlers finish their spells. Spinners stop arriving all at once.
632026-07-30
The last two overs belong to real closers.
622026-07-30
Better broadcasts: full bowling figures, smarter commentary.
612026-07-30
The 20th over goes to bowlers who actually bowl it in real life.
602026-07-29
Grounds pick winners without inflating the scoring.