Links
- Introduction
- Quick Start
- Signing Up
- Players: Skills
- Players: Other Info
- Competitions
- Friendly Matches
- Match Orders
- Match Ratings
- Match Engine
- Training
- Academies
- Finances
- Home Ground
- Supporters
- Transfer Market
- Affiliate Teams
- Pavilion Membership
- International Matches
- Levels/Ranks
- Fantasy League Points
- Entire rules
Quick Start
!Sigh! If you're reading this then you are one of the many people who can't be bothered reading the whole manual and just wants to get started straight away!
That's OK, this short quick start guide should get you on your feet and armed with enough knowledge to find your way around the From the Pavilion site, enabling you to understand and enjoy the game.
There are a number of things that might prove useful to know before you embark on your management career.
Home Page
This is the page that displays after you login. It contains:
- links to the league pages of all the competitions your club is competing in
- links to the scorecards and orders pages for upcoming and recently completed matches
- recent team news
- upcoming game events
- blogs
Your Club
As manager of a cricket club you have control over senior and youth squad recruitment and training, your home ground (including pitch preparation) and setting orders for upcoming matches.
Senior Squad
Your senior squad are the backbone of your club. All players aged 21 or over belong to your senior squad. Senior squad players are eligible to take part in senior one day and Twenty20 league matches and in Matt Krev's Memorial Cup matches.
Senior matches are much more popular than youth matches among club supporters and hence attract much larger crowds. Your successes and failures in senior matches have a considerable effect on our gate takings and on your supporters' mood.
Youth Squad
A good youth squad should hopefully contain some up and coming talented players that are being groomed for promotion into your senior squad. All players aged 20 and under belong to your youth squad.
As manager of your club you have control over the amount of money you invest in your academy. Each week you are able to recruit a new youth player for your youth squad.
The youth squad take part in a 40 overs a side limited overs competition as well as a youth Twenty 20 competition. Crowds are much smaller at youth matches and the effects on supporter mood of results in youth matches is much smaller than of senior matches.
Youth players are also eligible for selection in senior matches.
Match Orders
For each match you must select eleven players. Youth players can be selected for senior matches, but senior players are not eligible to play in youth matches.
When selecting the players for a match, you are selecting them in batting order. i.e. the players at the top of the line-up will bat first.
Among the eleven players you select, you also need to select five as bowlers, one as captain and one as your wicketkeeper.
As a general guide:
- pick your six best batters as your first six players in your line-up. Of these six players, try to pick one that has good keeping skill
- pick your five best bowlers to play somewhere in your line-up. Remember, your wicketkeeper cannot be selected as a bowler
- of the eleven players you selected above, pick the player with the highest captaincy and experience as your captain
To help to get you up to speed quickly, a "Player Skills Summary" section is displayed on the player page, assigning a rank to your player as a batter, bowler, allrounder and wicketkeeper. This ranking information is also displayed in the Batting, Bowling, Allrounder and Keeping tabs on the match orders page.
Keep in mind that the information displayed here is intended as a general guideline only that will hopefully provide useful information for new managers. Ultimately you as the club's manager will determine the role each player carries out in your team.
There are many other items to consider when setting your match orders. Please see the match orders section for further information.
Home Ground
There are two main areas of responsibility when managing your home ground. First is pitch preparation, where you are able to control the type of pitch that you play your home matches on. Selecting the correct pitch is an important tactical decision that should be reached after carefully weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of both your team and those of the opposition.
You can also order stadium upgrades to increase (or sometimes decrease) the size of your stadium. Stadium expansion is quite costly, so you should probably only consider expanding your stadium once you start selling out a few matches in a row.
Please see the ground section for further information on stadium expansion costs and pitch types.
Finances
Sadly, cricket clubs don't run on the smell of an oily rag any more :)
Managing your finances is an essential part of becoming a successful club. While From the Pavilion is not an economic management game, club managers do need to ensure that they don't overspend on that new star player or huge ground expansion.
The finance page gives you a quick snapshot regarding your financial position, displaying the summarised income and expenses over the past two weeks. If you need more information, the financial ledger page breaks down these summaries into individual transactions, allowing you to see exactly where you are earning and spending money.
Please see the finances section for further information on the financial aspects of the game.