CRICCLASH
Rules that the game actually enforces

How to play CricClash

CricClash is a draft-and-simulate cricket game. You do not bat or bowl with arcade timing. You build an XI under the same constraints a real selector faces — batting order, a keeper, a legal bowling attack — then a simulation engine plays the match from those ratings, the pitch, and a shared random seed. This page describes the rules the client and the Versus server both use, not a simplified version of cricket.

The draft loop

Each round a squad is rolled from the catalog — a real international side from a given year in ODI modes, or a real IPL franchise season in T20. You pick one unused name from that squad and place them in a batting slot. The next round rolls a different squad. You repeat until all eleven slots are filled. In Versus, Expert vs AI, Elite Pitch, Auction Trilogy, and IPL, both sides draw from the same rolled squad in snake order, so taking a player removes them from the pool for everyone.

On your turn you have about thirty seconds. You get one re-roll of the current squad if you have not yet used it that pick. If the clock expires, the game auto-picks a legal name for you. The room server validates every pick: clients never upload a finished XI.

Batting slots are not cosmetic

Every player card carries a legal slot range, written as a min and max batting position. An opener can sit at 1 or 2. A specialist seamer is usually 9–11. You cannot park Chris Gayle at number ten, and you cannot open with a nightwatchman bowler unless that player’s range actually includes those slots. Greyed names on the squad list have no empty slot left that they are allowed to occupy.

You also need a wicketkeeper in the XI. The draft UI warns you if you still do not have one. Leave it too late and the remaining squads may not offer a keeper who still fits an open slot.

Bowling attack (disqualification if you miss it)

A finished XI is illegal unless the bowling attack meets one of these mixes, counting specialist bowlers and genuine all-rounders:

That is the same check the Versus worker uses. An incomplete or illegal attack does not “mostly work” — the side can be disqualified before a ball is bowled. The draft banner tells you how many more bowlers or all-rounders you still need.

What BAT, POW, and BWL mean

BAT is batting skill for that season: runs, average, consistency, and role. It is the backbone of a long ODI innings. POW is power — six-hitting, boundary rate, and strike-rate ceiling. A high BAT with modest POW tends to occupy the crease; a high POW with modest BAT tends to score in bursts or get out swinging. BWL is bowling quality: wickets, economy, and phase threat. Non-bowlers sit on a low BWL band (typically single digits to low teens). Part-timers sit in the middle. Genuine new-ball or death bowlers sit much higher.

Grades are season-contextual. Virat Kohli in one IPL year is not automatically the same BAT as Kohli in another. Easy difficulty shows BAT · POW · BWL on every name while you pick. Hard hides those numbers so you draft from knowledge of the player and the season on the wheel.

Easy / Hard is not the same as AI difficulty

The home-screen Easy / Hard toggle only controls whether ratings are visible during the draft. It does not change the match engine. Expert vs AI has a separate control — Casual, Balanced, or Ruthless — that changes how the computer drafts and how it elects to bat or bowl. Casual spreads picks across a wider shortlist and sometimes takes the second-best option or defers the toss call. Balanced still prefers the top of its ranked list but leaves room for a human-like miss. Ruthless always takes its highest-ranked legal pick and does not throw toss elections. None of those knobs rewrite ball-by-ball outcomes; they change the XI and the election that then go into the same simulator.

How a match is actually played

Once both XIs are legal, the server (or the local AI room) draws one seed and simulates both innings from it. ODI modes are 50 overs a side. IPL is T20: 20 overs, a maximum of four overs per bowler, at least five bowling options, and no bowler on consecutive overs. IPL XIs may include at most four overseas players; the fifth overseas name greys out once the cap is full. T20 also uses the venue you drew (or picked) as a pitch modifier across powerplay, middle, and death overs.

You watch the innings unfold ball by ball. You do not click shots. Fast-forward exists on the live board, and in Versus only the batting side can use it. The scorecard at the end is the record of that seed, not a second roll.

Building an XI that survives

Fill the top order with BAT you trust through a long chase, then make sure POW is sitting where the innings needs it — often the middle and the death, not only at the top. Keep a keeper early enough that you are not hunting one on pick eleven. Treat bowling as a quota, not a leftover: if you reach the last four slots without a legal attack, the remaining squads may not save you. In IPL, count overseas names as you go; burning all four caps on batters can leave you unable to pick the overseas seamer you still need.

For a longer walkthrough of each mode, see Modes. Common product questions live on the FAQ. Venue-by-venue IPL drafting, ratings methodology, AI difficulty, and Auction Trilogy strategy are on Guides. Dated product changes are on What's New.

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