THE HEARTBREAKS OF FANTASY CRICKET

Cricinfo's Fantasy Cricket game is really driving me nuts. For three days in a row now, I have had less than average days... which means my ranking has fallen from a best of 988 to a worst of 6355. But this is not what is driving me nuts... it's the occasions when I end up being just just just short of bonus points for my team.

After the Australia v. New Zealand game at Nagpur, I was quietly satisfied. Even though I did not have the Man of the Match performer Mitchell Johnson in my team, I had had a good performance by my team's captain Shane Watson, a decent outing for Brett Lee and another okay outing for Michael Clarke.

In fact, in the case of Michael Clarke, I had been very lucky. During Australia's chase of New Zealand's paltry target, Clarke had taken a very go-slow approach and ended up with a Strike Rate of 64.86. In the Fantasy Cricket Scoring system, a Strike Rate of less than 75 is penalised with -15 points. But this penalty is applicable only when the batsman has scored a minimum of 25 runs.

Luckily for me, Clarke was 24* when White scored the winning single on the last ball of the 34th over. Had White played out the over, Clarke would have had to score the winning runs off the newer ball in the next over... and instead of 24 points, I would have earned only 10 points. So much for scoring more runs!

But I did not know that the luck I had in that game would be wiped out by the time the Sri Lanka v. Pakistan game at Colombo came about. There was an entire sequence of bad luck cases that took away crucial and valuable points that I could have earned in this game. Have a look:

TM Dilshan (Captain) - 41 runs of 55 balls at a SR of 74.54 {i.e. (41 - 10 - 15) X 2 = 16 X 2 = 32 points}. Had he batted 1 ball less OR scored 1 run more, his SR would have been above 75, and I would have had 62 points from him.

Kumar Sangakkara - 49 runs from 61 balls with 1 six (i.e. 49 -10 + 6 = 55 points). Had he scored just 1 more runs, I would have has a bonus of 15 points for his fifty. So here I lost another 16 points... 15 for the bonus and 1 for the run.

Nuwan Kulasekara - 24 runs from 14 balls with 1 six at a SR of 171.42 (i.e. 24 + 6 = 30 points). This is the worst case. Had he scored just 1 more, he would have had 25 runs and been eligible for Strike Rate bonus. With 1 more run, his SR would have been 178.57, and I would have had a 50-point bonus for Strike Rate above 175. That means I lost out on another 51 potential points here.

So in effect, by the smallest of margins like 1 run or 1 ball, I have lost almost 100 points in the Sri Lanka v. Pakistan game. With these 100 points, I might well have been placed within the 5000th rank. This is so very frustrating. I just hope that over the next week of the tournament, more of my players win Man of the Match Awards (preferably captains) so that I can gain some ground on those (like Soulberry and Sehwagology) who have surged ahead of me. Beware friends, I'll bounce back!

(P.S. As on 1st March, after the Sri Lanka v. Kenya game, I have overtaken Soulberry and am not far behind Sehwagology... not only am I in top-5000 overall now, but I am in top-600!)