In the true traditions of cricket statistics "nerdicity" (is that a word?  i.e. duckworth lewis) CricketGeek.com has come up with a unique rating system to rank side by side all players in all grades and will use this to dish out some awesome prizes next season.

The aim is to achieve a balance between batters, bowlers and all rounders and also reward consistent fielding efforts.  We also want to make the list dynamic and reflect current form rather than season averages.  Also we are interested in accumulated scores rather than artifically inflated averages or strike rates caused by infrequent turn out and not outs.

Here's how the calculations currently work, (this is new so suggestions are very welcome!!!):

• Sum all batting scores over the last 12 months.  The most recent month carries a weighting factor of 6, this drops linearly to 1 six months ago and then continues at an even weighting of 1 for the remaining 6 months.  This produces your batting factor.
• Sum all wickets over the last 12 months multiplied by a factor of 10.  The most recent month carries a weighting factor of 6, this drops linearly to 1 in six months and then continues at 1 for the remaining 6 months.  This produces your bowling factor
• The two factors are then combined by adding the square of each factor and taking the square root of the result.  (This prevents an average all-rounder scoring more than a top batsmen or bowler.  However a batsmen who bowls a bit will get some benefit (and vice versa), an all rounder will have to excell at both trades to climb the ranks.
• Catches over the last 6 months are added with a multiplicative factor of 20.  (Wicket keepers and good fielders will get a boost from this)
• Run outs affected over the last 6 months are added with a multiplicative factor of 40, match turning fielding efforts are greatly rewarded.
• The end result is scaled by your grade factor. This is a value determined by cricketgeek.com from the skill level in your particular grade, i.e. senior/premier cricket will rank higher than 5th grade.  Although we are not elitist so the factor at this point in time is always set to 1, we will review this over time but expect this to have only a minor affect on the overall scoring.
• The end result is your Cricket Geek Rating, all players are ranked on this value.  Each week it will be calculated and you can see how you rank is changing over time.

Stay tuned next season as we bring you some great prizes for being our top ranked cricket geek!