I just wanted to quickly try and explain what has been going on with the changes to the mail system today.

Mainly this was about transferring the mail system from using team IDs to using user IDs. However, we thought that seeing as we were going in there and making these changes, we might as well go a lot further and actually completely rewrite the system, so we did!

At this stage though, you are not going to see a lot of changes as we just want to make sure that everything is working as intended and that we have successfully transferred the old mails to the new system. The major groundwork has been done though that will allow many much needed enhancements to the system in the near future.

For now though we have added a few things in that should help you. You now have 2,500 characters to play with in your mails, if you need them. This is a huge improvement on the 500 that you previously had there.

We've also integrated btml into the system so that you can now include that in any mails.

Expect to see some more enhancements coming soon for mail.

If you spot any problems with the mail system, then please use the "Mail System Upgrade" thread in the Bugs forum to report them.

Thanks,

Allan.

UPDATE: We have had a release the new mail system without the Admin message area live as a temporary release. We will get the Admin message section live over the weekend.

I just wanted to keep you all up to date with where we are with the changes that are required to introduce Franchises and why they are necessary.

As many of you know, Battrick was initially set up by a rather inexperienced and naive designer (me) and then added to rather haphazardly over the years by an ever more knowledgeable me and various others who have helped me out. This has left us with by no means an ideal set up for adding to and improving. This is one of the main reasons why developments are at times slow and troublesome, the introduction of franchises included.

This particular development requires us to have a complete distinction between the manager and the team, or what we call the userID and the teamID. Due to the way that Battrick was developed as explained above this distinction is rather vague at the moment. Some areas where teamID should be used, we are using userID, and vice versa. Sometimes it is just a complete jumble and mix of both. By going through all the code (some 1300 stored procedures and 400 web files) we are getting the chance to not only tidy up with particular discrepancy, but to standardise the code across the whole site with a much more consistent and standard method that will allow future enhancements to be introduced much more effectively.

I guess the crux of this is that over the next wee while we will be slowly transferring the whole site to be correctly using teamID and userID. As we are making the code live there will be some disruption that will range from things looking a little funny for a short while and maybe not working quite correctly, to have to shut various areas of the site for a short time whilst the changes are propagated across all the areas that are affected. One example of the latter will be the sledging pages. We will try and give as much notice as possible prior to making these closures. Additionally, it may be necessary for us to shut the whole site for a period, but we are hoping to avoid that. It may be that instead all users will just be logged out en masse a couple of times.

I hope this explains what will be coming up shortly and keeps you all up to date.

Happy New Year to you all and good luck.

Welcome to the second Flavour of the month, Battrick's monthly take on the world of cricket. It's been a sensational month that provided everything that makes cricket the most compelling sport on earth. And a few new faces made their presence felt along the way.

What happened?

Sri Lanka and Pakistan draw the third and final Test of their three-match series which Pakistan win 1-0. Sri Lanka's alarming slide and Pakistan's resurgence is further cemented by Pakistan's subsequent 4-1 ODI series win.

The West Indies win their second Test against Bangladesh to win the series 1-0. No-one really cares.

Zimbabwe host New Zealand in a one-off Test match and it's a belter. Chasing 366 to win after a second innings declaration by the Kiwis, Zimbabwe make it to 265 for 3 before losing their last seven wickets for 66 and losing by 34 runs. Usually this would be as good a game as you could hope for. In this month it's easily eclipsed.

In South Africa, Test cricket stands up, stamps its feet and proves why it is the best game in the world. 3.0.8.0.4.4.9(no).1.5.4.9.0.2.0.0.3.3. There are so many ways to interpret the madness of the second day, but I like that one as it's the run of scores between South Africa's second wicket and Australia's ninth. The fact that two of the next three scores were centuries as South Africa waltzed to victory just proves why Test cricket is so bonkers. The second Test was just as compelling as it ebbed and flowed as only a Test match can and Australia crept home by two wickets. Of course we should be looking forward to more of the same, but there were only Two Tests in the series which is a bigger joke than either side's batting performance in the first Test.

India deal out a 2-0 Test series victory over West Indies. The first two Tests are unremarkable and then Test cricket once again stands up, stamps its feet and screams “Did you hear me the first time?” The first four days of the final Test are as unremarkable as the first two Tests. Over 1,000 runs are scored in the first two innings (Tendulkar gets less than 100 of them) and day five starts with West Indies nearly 200 runs ahead for two wickets. They then lose eight wickets for 53, India race to 100 for one off 20, West Indies fight back and somehow after 17 wickets and nearly 300 runs in the day the match is drawn.

Waffle of the month

Phew. There's barely room to actually talk about anything after that little lot. And yet there is so much to talk about. We'll gloss over Tendulkar's struggle to get to his hundredth hundred (if it makes him feel any better, Mark Ramprakash struggled in a similar vein to get to his hundredth first-class hundred). You've probably read more than enough about Pakistani players going to jail for spot-fixing. We could discuss the concerns about amazing Test cricket being played out in front of far-from-amazing Test crowds. Or Zimbabwe's rebirth in Test cricket. But you've probably read lots about all of those things so here's the one thing that surprised me the most this month...

I got excited about the good performance of a young Australian cricketer.
Nothing overly surprising about that you might think, except that I am an England fan and after years of being smashed by the Aussies you would think I'd be happy to see them struggle. You might assume that after years of being dismantled by a line-up of great cricketers that the last thing I would want is more of them to appear from a production line that has struggled with quality control of late. I live in Australia now and I took great joy out of their capitulation in South Africa. Oh the texts. The banter. The schadenfraude.

But when Cummins made his bow in such an impressive way in the second Test I breathed a sight of relief. Because as audiences dwindle, crowds thin and one of the greatest months in Test cricket was barely noticed outside of the cricket loving public we need good new players, whatever their nationality. And if that means a new fast bowler who says G'day rather than Good Day then so be it.
Cricket needs competition, needs high standards and it needs new heroes. As much as England have a great side at the moment, there aren't many players in the team you would instantly want to emulate in the schoolyard. No Flintoff, no Gough, no Botham if you will. KP has a style that excites people, Bell is great to watch, Prior exciting, Swann exuberant and yet none is a true Boy's Own hero.
Chanderpaul has been a phenomenal cricketer for the West Indies, but he hardly gets the pulse racing. Gayle is the guy you would probably want to be in the playground, but he's not attending school at the moment. Sri Lanka's biggest name is gone and it's second biggest only playing ODIs. (Sangakarra and Jayawardene are extraordinary cricketers, but Murali and Lasith Malinga get the bums on seats). Pakistan have just lost the greatest talent they had produced since Wasim and Waqar and I suspect that the calls for leniency for Amir citing his age were more because cricket was losing a great talent than because of his youth. (The last time I checked when you're 18 you're an adult and therefore responsible for your own actions.) I'm not sure anyone would have cared so much or asked for a reduced sentence if he was a fringe player.

India's greats are slowly being phased out and while Sehwag is one of the most exciting Test cricketers the game has ever produced, he has yet to attain the gravitas, longevity and deification of Sachin, Dravid and VVS. As for New Zealand and Australia, Ponting continues to perform a terribly poor impression of his former self and while cricketers such as Michael Clarke, Daniel Vettori and Ross Taylor are all of high quality they lack a certain sparkle.

Which is why the emergence of new talent seems particularly important right now and why seeing Cummins come in and stroll around like he has been playing for years is good. Even more exciting is the emergence of Darren Bravo for the West Indies. The constant comparisons with Lara, the last great West Indian cricketer, are a) because of the statistical anomaly that saw him scoring and averaging the same after a few Tests, b) because of his style c) because the 21st century demands comparisons but d) because there is a need for new legends.

Meanwhile India have blooded an almost entirely new Test attack. South Africa introduced Vernon Philander to great effect. Steve Finn struggles to get in England's side. Maybe these names don't quite have that stardust I'm hankering after, but all of a sudden there are plenty of new blooms were old hardy plants were living and surely a couple will develop into proper superstars.

It's easy to get overexcited and too easy to judge players too quickly, but in a month where the game has provided amazing viewing it has also suggested that a new class of players may be moving into take the place of the old guard. And that has to be a good thing for any cricket fan, whatever the nationality of the players coming through.

---

Paul Winslow is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Find out more about him at http://www.thewinslowboy.com.au

Just a quick update to hopefully answer a few questions on pitch squares that have come up over the past few weeks since their introduction.

There were a couple of settling in bugs with these but now that they are working as intended, we can confirm that all pitch types are obtainable within the 7 days you have to prepare a pitch. Having said that, pitch preparation is currently a one way progress. Once you start in a certain direction from Green, you can only move in that direction. Hence, we recommend that if you want to change your pitch type around a lot, it may be better to have a default of Green to allow you to move in either direction.

We will be continuing to monitor the thread on Global discussing pitch squares and encourage people to suggest any enhancements via the Dev Ideas board to be considered in future work.

I just wanted to try and clarify a few points about how the new pitches are working.

First of all, your pitch options will become available exactly 7 days before the match is due to start, eg, if the match is due to start at 0400 BT time on the 8th December, then the pitch will not be shown on the ground page till 0400 on the 1st December.

The pitch when it is first shown will always be GREEN.

From the next daily update for your country after that it will start to move towards either your default pitch request, or if you have made a different one, then to the requested pitch for that match.

During pitch preparation updates to the pitch always occur during the daily updates.

For FC matches once a match has started the pitch will degrade over the match.

This week, the degradation of the pitch has been shown immediately on the ground page, ie straight after the match has started. From next week, this will not be shown until after the match has finished play for the day.

Additionally, this week the groundsmen got a little carried away and were sneaking onto the square at night and repairing the damage that had been done during the day. We've had a stern word with them and they will not be doing that again.

Finally, I know that there are a fair few old scorecards that are not right still. We are trying to make sure that the cached files for those games are successfully cleared and the correct pitch conditions should be shown after that.

Hopefully this clears up most of the queries that have been around.

You may have noticed this week the change in the way that your pitches are ordered in your ground page. This is the introduction of multiple pitches, or a square that your groundsman has at his disposal.

You will be able to see all the games due to be played at your ground in the next week and give individual orders for each match pitch to your groundsman. This means you could play on a dusty pitch on a Monday and then a cracked pitch on a Tuesday which was not possible before.

For those that do not want to be giving pitch orders so frequently, you can still give a default pitch type that you would like the groundsman to prepare. Unless told otherwise, that is the pitch that they will prepare.

Pitch preparation is no longer on a straight sliding scale. You now will always start with a green pitch, and then there are two different lines of preparation that your groundsman can go down:

• Green >> Flat >> Slow >> Dusty
• Green >> Hard & Fast >> Cracked >> Uneven

Once he has started down one path, there is no turning back to go down the other. In other words, if you had a default pitch type of Dusty and with 2 days of preparation gone, the pitch was currently showing Flat, then there is no possible way to produce a Cracked pitch.

Another addition here is that you will get the pitches in there transition stages as well. That is to say, when they are on there way from say Green to Flat, you will go through a stage of Green/Flat, and then Flat/Green prior to having a Flat pitch. If a match is played on a transitional surface, then there will be elements of both type of pitch at play in the match. Any players with preferences for either type of pitch will get their bonus on these types of pitches.

The last thing to say about the new pitches is that in FC games, you will see a degradation of the pitch on the ground page. There is nothing that you can do about this, but to watch and adapt as required.

I hope that this change is not too much work for those that do not want it, but enough for those that are keen to take on a little bit more tactical play around their games.

Enjoy.

Last Sunday in the early BT hours, users experienced some flash back when games travelled back in time by an hour, and then seized up, whilst other parts of the site showing the games were still an hour ahead of the commentary that was no longer showing.

Confusing? Well it was sure muddled up. The cause was that the clocks in the UK where our servers are went back by 1 hour at 0200 BT time on Sunday morning. We tried to put in a script that would seamlessly take account of the clock change and adapt the commentary for you. Needless to say it didn't work! For that, we apologise to all that were affected.

Although this happens only twice a year, and with a different issue each time, we are already looking at and testing solutions to this problem that has always been with us so that by the time the clocks go forward again in March, we will have a solution in place.

Its the best argument we've heard for the UK staying permanently on Daylight saving time!

Apologies again to all that suffered as a result.

A good friend of mine, who happens to be a tad of a cricket nut as well as a freelance journalist, is spending a lot of idle hours in Australia waiting for his work visa to come through, and to while away the hours, he has agreed to produce a monthly article on cricket from around the world. We're calling it Flavour of the Month and we hope you enjoy it.

---

Welcome to the first edition of Flavour of the month, Battrick's monthly take on the world of cricket. Every month we'll take a quick look at what happened in the cricketing world and pick one talking point to rant about or discuss sagely, depending on our mood. This month it's definitely a rant....

What happened?

Sri Lanka and Pakistan went head-to-head in the neutral venue of Dubai. Despite Sangakarra's best efforts he can only save one of the two Tests and Sri Lanka's alarming Test match freefall continues. Also in the UAE, the host nation beat Afghanistan in a couple of ICC Intercontinental Cup ODIs.

Bangladesh have the better of the first Test in the West Indies, but rain has the better of both teams with two full days play lost. Elias Sunny inspires a bunch of Sunny Shines, Sunny Outlook and Sunny Delight headlines with seven wickets on debut.

It's an ODI overdose month. West Indies beat Bangladesh 2-1 in Bangladesh, Australia beat South Africa 2-1 in South Africa, and New Zealand beat Zimbabwe 2-1 in Zim. Nobody really cares about much of that although in the latter series the hosts won a belter of a last rubber with 1 wicket and 1 ball to go. And India get some measure of revenge by humiliating England 5-0... there's no place like home.

And finally... Mumbai Indians win the Champions League Twenty, but what value can you really put on that? That's the question we ask in this month's talking point.

It says much for my love of the game that I got quite sucked in by the Champions League, despite a lack of much enthusiasm for the Twenty20 format in general and this bastard child of the various T20 global competitions in particular. My enjoyment came from places I didn't expect, however. The bowling of Sunil Narine for Trinidad and Tobago was excellent and he was supported by the big hitting and medium-paced bowling of Kevon Cooper. Another all-rounder to impress was Somerset's Roelof van der Merwe. I suppose I should mention David Warner for back-to-back centuries, but it's really bowling performances that take the plaudits in this form of the game, as amazing as his feats were.

All of which entertained me in a way the tournament as a whole never would, could or will because it's a bit of a joke. At first glance it would seem an obvious step to bring the best T20 team together to prove who is the best and attempting to follow the format of football's extraordinarily popular Champions League wasn't a difficult decision to make. Not content with stealing the name they even made the trophy look similar.

But the idea is fatally flawed because of one simple reason. Footballers play for one club. If they transfer between clubs they can't just pop back and play for their old one when the fancy (and the offer of a few quid) takes them. T20 players on the other hand... well if the word mercenary didn't exist then surely they would have had to invent it. They play for so many different teams they must struggle to know which colour shirt to put on in the morning.

I'm going to pick on Kieron Pollard here. It's not his fault that everyone wants him on their team and you can't blame the players for taking all the money on offer – which of us wouldn't? But a quick check of his CV shows stints playing for Mumbai Indians, Somerset, South Australia and Trinidad & Tobago. All of whom played in the Champions League. So who did Pollard choose to play for? Surely he would go for the team representing the country of his birth? Erm no. India pretty much owns T20, the IPL pretty much owns the players and seeing as the Champions League is very much an Indian tournament any player who played for an IPL team represented that team in the Champions League. That's how we ended up with Dwayne Bravo playing for Chennai Super Kings against Trinidad and Tobago with CSK armbands on one arm and T&T on the other. (Despite Bravo being Chennai's best player they still lost that game – the best sporting moment of the tournament.)

So if the purpose of the exercise is to find out which is the best domestic T20 team on the planet then it fails miserably to do so. If all the star players are playing for their Indian clubs then it doesn't take a genius to work out they probably have a better chance of winning the thing. As Somerset captain Alfonso Thomas pointed out when asked why his team had not managed to chase down the Mumbai Indians: “At that point of the game, we normally have a guy called Pollard coming in for us, but unfortunately he was playing for the other team.”

If that seemed faintly ridiculous then how about this? If Somerset had overcome Mumbai in that semi-final.... Pollard would have been eligible to play for Somerset in the final. Win-win situation for the big man, but pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with the tournament. Sport is supposed to be about teams working together, playing together, winning together and losing together... the idea of losing a match and then popping over to play for the other team in the final devalues everything that is wonderful about team sport. It's also another nail in the coffin of the idea that this tournament would find the best T20 team. It does nothing of the sort.

And while on the one hand Mumbai Indians did well to win despite injuries to Tendulkar, Munaf Patel, Davy Jacobs and several more, the tournament organisers saw fit to bend the rules for them because of those injuries. With several of their Indian players injured they were given dispensation to play five foreign players instead of the mandatory four. So in a country of a billion people they couldn't find another Indian to play instead? The decision was made so the team couldn't bring in someone who had not played for them in the qualifying tournament, but they still had enough Indian players to field a team (the ruling should surely have been a last resort – injuries are part and parcel of the any sport), and as we've already seen who plays for your team in qualifying doesn't necessarily equate to who plays for you in this tournament.

An official statement about the latter decision stated it was made “ to ensure the integrity of the tournament“ which seems laughable when this tournament barely had any integrity to start with.

---

Paul Winslow is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Find out more about him at http://www.thewinslowboy.com.au
Feedback thread

Raising membership prices is something that was always going to be a delicate matter. There have been those that have been advising me to do it for quite some time now, but I have always resisted doing so whilst I possibly could.

So, I guess the question is why now?

Well, maybe I should have bitten the bullet a long time ago and put ther prices up annually in line with inflation, but seeing as Battrick was covering its rising costs with its income, I saw no value to me, or to you in doing so.

Since day 1 back in 2005, six and a half years ago, we have seen the membership package increase dramatically, and in the next 24 hours, you will see it take another big step forward followed by some more innovative additions in the coming weeks. whilst the price has not risen one penny. In fact, for many of you the price has come down considerably with the fall in value of the Pound.

Those that think that I am just milking it in from Battrick, and that this is yet another move by me to try and grab some more money are, sadly, way off the mark. Battrick is a limited company, which means that we have to file accounts with Companies House each year. Those accounts are open to everyone and anyone that wishes to see them, and they will find that Battrick is certainly not the cash cow that some believe it to be.

On the contrary, with the rising costs it is more and more me that is keeping Battrick a going concern, and to that end, I have been neglecting Battrick to a large degree to try and raise finance by working on other projects.

This really was a last resort for me, and to try and ease the blow I have been working hard on the new features that will be released very shortly (if not already by the time you read this.)

Hopefully together over the coming months we can work together on re-invigorating Battrick and the user base to grow it again to sizes we had before and beyond.

I have decided to be a lot more open about what I am doing behind the scenes, what I am working on, and ideas that I have had. These will be open to discussion by all, and hopefully with those discussions, some solid popular and innovative ideas can be formulated. I will be tweeting now on development ideas (follow us @battrick), and the Facebook page will start to come to life again with thoughts and ideas, as well as hopefully making a big effort to post more blogs here for discussion.

In the meantime, apologies for having the make this change, and I do hope that you enjoy the new features that will be with you imminently.

As mentioned in the News Announcement, players are now all required to be listed for a minimum of one week's wages. This will have three main effects on the market:
1. The so called "monsters" are the ones selling for a pittance compared to their wages, but are routinely killing off teams that are not realising the implications of their purchase. This minimum purchase price will lead to a small but real reduction in this.
2. Managers buying a player to play in one game and then fire before they have to pay their wages will, in effect, be paying their wages regardless.
3. Managers who regularly list players at £0 will now be paying a listing fee. There certainly was concern in this area and the numbers were looked at to some depth but with the fact that 80% of the listing fee is returned on sale of the player, and the maximum you end up paying is £16k if a player sells (after the 80% return), means that we see this as being a very minor effect on teams.

To illustrate the last point, let's say you have a player that has a wage of £10,000. To list them at the new minimum, will cost 5% of that price - £500, of which £400 is returned when the player sells. A net cost of £100 to the team.

We have discussed this at great length and believe that this is a fair change to the overall game whilst it will have a very small impact on some teams.