6. Players
Your most important asset for winning games! Each player has seven main skills that determine their ability. They are:
Stamina - A players stamina is arguably his most important attribute. As a game goes on, players will tire. No matter how high his stamina skill, he will experience some reduction in his performance, but the extent to which his tiring is going to affect his performance will depend totally on his stamina. The higher the players stamina, the lower the tiring effect.
There is a limit to how high a players stamina can be though. Once he reaches superb stamina, you will no matter how hard he trains at his fitness, it will never go higher. There are limits to human performance!
Batting - Important for all players that are going to bat. This is the primary skill for determining a batsman’s overall skill.
Bowling - Important for all players that are going to bowl. This is the primary skill for determining a bowler’s overall skill.
Wicket Keeping - This skill is important for wicket keepers only. It will help to have a good wicket keeper as he will tend to hold on to a lot of chances for catches and make more stumpings. He will also be responsible for keeping byes and leg-byes down to a minimum.
Concentration - This is an important skill for batsmen. The importance of this will be larger for First Class games than for one day games, although it will have an impact. A batsman may be very well endowed in batting skill, but if he can’t concentrate then he is likely to make a silly mistake and get out earlier than he would have otherwise. It also has an effect on a teams fielding ability. All the fielders need to stay alert or they may miss that chance for a catch.
Consistency - This is an important skill for bowlers. The importance of this will be larger for First Class games than for one day games, although it will have an impact. A bowler may have a great amount of bowling skill, but if he can’t consistently put the ball in the same areas then he is likely to find himself disappearing to all areas of the park more often than he otherwise would. It also has an effect on a teams fielding ability. The more consistent a side, the more likely they are to hold their catches.
Fielding - Important for all your players. They do say that catches win matches, and if your team’s fielding is not up to scratch, then you will not catch those catches.
All of these abilities can be improved by giving your player individual training. As in real life, you will see your younger players improving their skills faster than older ones. Read the ‘Nets’ section to find out more about this.
There are 4 other aspects to your players that you need to pay attention to:
Experience - An inexperienced player will not know what to do in certain situations (eg hog the strike with a better batsman left at the other end) and may well make stupid mistakes that a more seasoned player would not.
Aggression - this gives an indication of what is the player’s natural approach to playing. The more aggressive a player, the more likely he is to score runs quickly as a batsman, but he will be more likely to get out. For a bowler, he is more likely to get wickets, but also more likely to be expensive. This can be tempered by individual orders though.
Leadership - an important skill for your captain only. He will have various decisions to make throughout a game, and may have to lift a depressed side when things are not going well. This combined with his experience will determine how effective he is as a captain. The highest leadership a player can be is superb.
Form - A sad fact of life is that players go in and out of form. The same is true in Battrick. All you can do to try and counter this is play the players in games. Alternatively, a player who is receiving individual training has a better chance of increasing his form. A players form has a significant impact on a player’s performance. You may well be better off picking a worse batsman who is in better form, than your star player who is in "abysmal" form. Form is also capped at strong.