The original publisher of Wicketz, a fine cricket game that unfortunately isn’t as widely available as it once was, has put a much sought after version of a super deluxe version of the game on eBay. The fab boxed version of the game contains lots of teams, the complete game, and of course the wooden case holding it all together. If you want a piece of cricket board game history, get over to eBay now and have a bid. Good luck.

Stumpz is one of the real classics amongst cricket board games. Created by an unknown designer working for the De La Rue Company, the game appears to have first been released in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

There are many different versions of the game that appeared over the years. I would be guessing the order they were published in, but the game came in at least two size formats – large, with a hard backed board, and small, with a soft cloth or material foldable boards.

The large version comes in what I have deemed the “deluxe” version and the normal version. The deluxe version contains a mounted board made of cardboard (the backing) and felt (the board itself). This deluxe version contains small lead figures for the players, and higher quality wicket indicators and components. The lesser version of the large board contains wooden pegs for players, and a paper front of the board.

The smaller version of the game is in itself, quite lovely. More on it soon.

March 2010: We’re upgrading replaycricket.com with a new design. It’s mostly working but you may encounter the odd stoppage in play. If this happens, have a cup of tea. Play will resume as soon as possible.

I recently received an email from Rich about a discovery he made while cleaning out his loft.

“Hi, While clearing out my loft I have come across some table cricket figures. I have a batsman that is connected to a plastic arm, there’s is a length of string that attaches to a metal/lead bat. The batsman’s body is attached to the plastic arm but his head and shoulders rotate as you pull on the string. The bowler is also attached to a large plastic stand. in his right hand he is holding what looks like half a ball, his arms rotate. There is a length of plastic like a gutter that the bowler must push the ball down. The rest of the players I have are fielders all in different standing positions. The fielders stands are plastic and are a half moon shape. The fielders have red hats( the batsman is blue), the bowler has no hat. I have 4 figures that look like slips, 5 upright outfield players but no wicketkeeper. There is also some boundary pieces that would have held the card boundary line. There is Velcro on the base of the boundary plastic pieces.
I have looked for ages on the internet and not found any similar. There are no markings on the pieces. I hope you can help me with some information..”

After Rich sent some pics which looked like this …

… I did a short bit of detective work and identified them as figures from a 1960s version of Test Match (thanks Board Game Geek!).

2 pages of tightly typed codes have arrived in my snail mail. Magic. More soon.

Got an email from Andrew Hopcroft this week about a game he played as a child from an old Eagle Annual (no 5.) that he got from his Dad. The game feels like Book Cricket, an age old game played by school kids everywhere (a relative, I suspect, of Chapel Cricket, which a colleagues father played during church services with his friends!). Following are the scans of the relevant page and some background from Andrew :-)

“As a child I ‘inherited’ from my father his old train set, numerous dinky cars and a collection of Eagle Annuals. In ‘Eagle Annual Number 5′ (1956) amongst the adventures of Dan Dare, a cutaway drawing of a ‘Britannia’ Class 4-6-2 Locomotive and highlights in the life of Denis Compton was a small article entitled ‘Cricket By The Fireside’! Subtitled ‘a realistic way of playing imaginary matches indoors’ the article presented a set of rules to play a match of cricket with a pen, some paper and a book.

I played many enjoyable matches under these rules between teams of actors (John Wayne always played a leading role), family and friends, artists, writers and cricketers of the day, Botham, Gower, Viv Richards and Bob Willis amongst others – on occasion the likes of WG Grace and CB Fry would get a run out. These all tended to be one-off matches, teams were constructed for the match and disassembled afterwards with no records kept, leagues unformed and trophy’s un-won. Eventually my alphabet cricket gave way to rules involving dice where national leagues were formed, internationals played and statistics obsessively poured over! Regards – Andrew Hopcroft”

To view and image just click on it:

Another purchase from eBay. This time a really odd post from the 70s. Part of the “Action Transfer Poster” series. This one recreates eight of Dennis Lillee’s most dramatic moments. The post has lots of empty spaces and you are supposed to rub some letraset-like transfers on. Thankfully whoever bought this one kept the transfers intact and in reasonable condition.

The annual cricket game working bee is in full swing, but along the way I’ve had time to play around with some of the better cricket games in my collection. This end of year break has been punctuated with some Subbuteo with my pal PLG (ok, only half an hours play – it looks more beautiful than it plays!), Pavilion Cricket (some interesting ideas, esp. in the area of fielding), International Cricket (a bit of a dice roll fest, but always enjoyable) and my new favourite, Minden Playing Card Cricket.

Late last year I was lucky enough to get hold of the complete Minden game – Basic, Advanced, and a full set of Advanced Player Cards. The game plays out overs rather than individual balls but there is still some scope for hat-tricks, collapses, etc. This morning Jeff Thompson of the 1977 Aussies managed a hat trick against the Poms … he tore through their line up with only the late, great, Bob Woolmer showing any kind of resistance (with a tiny tail wag from Derek Underwood).

Once you get used to flipping cards with Minden rather than rolling dice, the game is  incredibly satisfying and as far as I can tell, accurate…and, dare I say it, it’s fun. I’ve enjoyed the sheer drama it can create, which is greater than any other game I’ve played.

And, you can burn through a full Test Match in just a few hours.

As always, I continue to find slow gaming – rolling dice, pushing pencil, adding stats – way more satisfying than booting up the computer and playing a computer game (although I must concede that Rockingham’s Cricket Coach is pretty good, as is Childish Thing’s International Cricket Captain).

Back to the deck.

One of the great things about the interweb is that you can ALWAYS find someone more obsessive about something than you are. My specialist subject is, of course, cricket board games. It’s gotten so bad that when it was suggested at work today that we have a clean up I tackled a big pile of rubbish behind my desk only to be shocked to discover three games I bought some time ago and, er, forgot about …

But that’s not the point of this short post. Last night while looking around the web, I discover this site:

http://www.cyclingboardgames.net/

It contains a vast and rich collection of cycle-related board games. More than I could ever have dreamt could have been made about a subject. But there it it, in living HTML. Game after game after game.

Simply wonderful.

A new cricket board game, Lords of Cricket, has just been published in Australia. It takes into account Test, One Day, Twenty20 and, apparently, back yard cricket. A new web site has been launched and, as far as I can tell at this stage, it is available in a number of retailers in Australia.

Created by Paul Friend when he was 12, the game found its way out of his childhood game cupboard recently when his own kids and friends discovered it and started to play. This, according to the game’s web site, encouraged him to publish it and make it available to the wider world.

The game is “designed to replicate game conditions including real life statistics and score keeping Lords of Cricket is fun and educational for kids, improving their maths skills while teaching them the fundamentals of cricket. Great for players of all ages from 7 to 107 Lords of Cricket is a board game to be enjoyed by the whole family.”

The official web site is: http://www.lordsofcricket.com/

Okay I usually never write about computer cricket games. In fact, as far as I can recall this is the very first time, so for true fans of the cricket board game look away now.

Cricket Revolution is a new cricket game that shows a lot of potential. It is written by a company based in Pakistan, a country not known for its computer game industry, and unlike recent offers from Codemasters and EA (okay, so they’re not so recent), it looks and plays well.

It requires a LOT of practice to get to grips with it as there are many, many key combinations to remember for the variety of shots that a batsman can play, and the types of balls a bowler can bowl. This complexity has seen it marked down by some game reviewers, but for me this complexity is what makes it an outstanding game.

The game is also getting knocked for not being official, but as EA shows each time it releases a game, having official player names don’t add to the quality of a computer game. It also gets knocked for its graphics, which to my eye are clunky but fine and I care little about as the game play is the thing.

While it focuses on online play it does play very, very well solo, and it is aimed squarely at the Twenty20 market. While you can play ODIs, there is no Test Match mode.

There are some nice touches though, like batsmen getting into really hot streaks or being totally rattled, and a host of different ball types. You can read the full player guide here which goes into some excruciating but necessary detail.

Overall all I’ve found this a pretty good game to play, and it avoids the dreariness that usually effects computer games as it inserts a bit of silliness and fun into the game play. It’s obviously designed for a younger audience, but one that is obsessed with the game itself. I admire the fact they have stayed away from simplifying the batting and bowling too much.

The game can be purchased directly from Steam, the downloadable game service and it’s about half the price of other games. Just for the fact it’s something different it’s worth giving it a go.

Final note: While we’re on the subject of PC games, here’s another I feel I should promote as Oli, the main programmer, has worked away at this game for years and it’s really getting to a good place. He listens to his community of players. He updates the game constantly and is focussed on making each new release better than the last. As he does it mostly solo, I think anyone with a passing interest in cricket games should support his fine effort of Cricket Coach.

Amazing tournament has just ended with NSW walking away from the first Champions League (cricinfo link) with a check of $2.5 million. Too bad the Aussie dollar is currently almost at parity with the US as that woulda bought quite a few VBs back in the day.

That aside the tournament showed what a truly epic game Twenty20 can be. It had it all from one run wins, to super overs (when the game is a tie), to yesterday’s final where one man, Mr B Lee, pretty much won the game by bowling, batting and catching like a demon.

Has stirred the blood to get out the old RC Twenty 20 game and give it another whirl. Almost there, almost there… ;-)

Over the past month I have been having a great correspondence with Mr T Dyke, who connected with me via this site.

It turns out his brother bought a copy of my favourite cricket board game, Stumpz, in 1938 when he was just 10. Now, 81, said brother is busily teaching his 10 year old grandson to play the game, along the way introducing him to the wonders of cricket.

It seemed, however, there were a few pieces missing, including the rules, so in exchange for an interview, I sent those along to complete Mr A.L. Dyke’s game.

A.L. Dyke today, game at the ready.

Here follows the interview:

Where did you buy the game and when? 1938 or 39 in Bournemouth – Beale’s or Bealesons.

Why did you buy it? I had enjoyed this game at school, Epworth College in Rhyl, N.Wales, where it was available in the library

Were there other cricket games around at the time that you can recall. What were their names? Can you describe anything about them? Yes, forgotten the name, but thought it was a single word – and I would have guessed at “Wicketz” – could that name have been used before the game of the same name produced later, as on your website ? Tactile game with spring loaded bowling device, which projected a rather large ball bearing against a batting device consisting of a rubber band which you could angle, to drive to the off or on sides, and if you lifted it up too far, you could be bowled!

Can you remember any memorable games of Stumpz? Too many to remember, many against my friend next door.

Who were your favourite real life players at the time? Len Hutton – I had a Gradidge Len Hutton autograph bat, before he made his record test match score of 364. My next bat was after his 364, and recorded that fact on the face. Following on from Hutton, Yorkshire players, such as Hedley Verity, Maurice Leyland, and the lesser known wicketkeeper, Arthur Wood, who kept wicket on the occasion of the record score at the Oval, although Les Ames kept him out of the test team most of the time, in that era.

Did you get to see much cricket at the time you bought the game? No professional cricket seen at that time, but I played a lot for the school team, at Epworth.

What are you doing with the game these days? It lay many decades in the attic. Recently re-discovered and grandson loves it, cottoning on very quickly !

A final tidbit regarding the excellent photograph comes from brother, Tim: An interesting extra bit of info is that “Billy” Nelson in the picture came fron Nelson, in Lancashire, and was coached in the holidays by the great Learie Constantine, who was then playing as a pro in the Lancashire league.

Tim has also received an email from the De La Rue archivist, as he was trying to find the correct age for the game. While the archivist could divulge little, as the company’s HQ was bombed during The Blitz, it seems the game is definitely from the early 1930s and possibly as early as the 1920s.

School boy graffiti from the 30s

Managed to pick up a new game that until recently I’d never heard of. Good old eBay. The game is called Jupe Bros Australian Table Cricket. It looks like a lovely, early version of a game that has been mass produced for absolutely years. Best of all the box looks in pristine condition and all the figures and other bits and pieces seem to be there. The only thing missing is any rule book as far as I can seel.

The seller dates in from the 1940s. Here are some of the photos from the eBay bid. Will take some better ones once it arrives.

Just going thru the collection tonight and realised I have quite a few games that I haven’t documented or uploaded (quite a few, actually). So, I’ve scanned and uploaded a game from Australia from the early 90s called Howzat which I received in exchange for an article I wrote recently for a cricket magazine.

The game consists of a number of charts which produce a set run rate (from 3 an over to 7). It allows you to select different quality of batsmen each of whom has a different chance of getting out.

Like many cricket board games, this one is flawed. Majorly flawed in fact because it has different levels of batsmen, but all bowlers are considered the same. This sentance is the give away: “All bowlers have an equal chance of taking wickets.”

What?

So, from a game playing point of view, it’s a dud. From a labour of love point of view, I love it. The effort that’s gone into it must have been considerable, so for that alone, I’m happy it’s in my collection.

For lots of images of it, go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/replaycricketgames/photos/album/427560126/pic/list