Dev Mehta's Hit for Six

Laws of the Game

Hit for Six is a draw-poker-like game played with the true career figures of international cricketers. It is free, requires no account, and settles its own arguments.

1.00 — Objectives

1.01 The objective of each player is to name the finest XI — a side whose combined careers best satisfy the Rule in force.

2.00 — The Decks

2.01 Every card bears a cricketer's true career line in one format. Four decks are sanctioned: T20 Internationals and One-Day Internationals, which hold the Full Members' cricketers; Test Matches; and The Associates, the T20I cards of everyone else, Nepal to Bhutan, whose figures were made against one another and are best compared among themselves. A man who played all three formats holds three cards, one to a deck, and they do not resemble one another.

Law 2.01 Comment: The figures are ball-by-ball records from Cricsheet, which begin in the early 2000s. A career that began before the record does is counted from the day the record picked it up. The Chairman is aware that this is hard on the Little Master, has said so to the television at length, and declines to adjust for it.

2.02 Each card shows the player's initials over his stat fingerprint — a twelve-ray figure drawn from the career itself, in the colours of the country he played most for. No photograph, likeness, or badge appears on any card. Names are given as the scorebook gives them.

3.00 — The Deal and the Over

3.01 Each hand begins with eleven cricketers, dealt face up. 3.02 One over of changes follows, strictly descending: drop as many as three men, then two, then one — six deliveries in all. 3.03 A player may name the XI at any time, forfeiting the rest of the over.

3.04 The eleven held when the over is done are the side. There is no twelfth man, no substitute, and no further selection of any kind.

4.00 — Judgment

4.01 Each hand is judged under one Rule. With the bat, the eleven are one side: The Average (every run over every dismissal — in every game), Runs on the Board (combined runs), Strike Rate (runs per hundred balls), Maximums (combined sixes), Occupy the Crease (combined balls faced). With the ball: Wickets (combined, part-timers count), The Economy (fewest runs per over for the attack) and Bowling Average (fewest runs per wicket for the attack). Then Six and Out (nearest the line in combined sixes without clearing it; clear it and you are out — nought) and The Toss (the rule is concealed until you have named your XI; you pick blind and answer for it anyway).

4.02 The attack is the five men in your XI who have bowled the most. A man among the five without a proper bowling record is charged as a part-timer: the deck's going rate, and a quarter worse. No side has ever bowled twenty overs with three bowlers, and the Committee will not start now.

Law 4.01 Comment: The Average punishes greed. A tail of four rabbits is a great weight upon a batting average, and the Chairman has watched many a proud top order sink beneath one, some of them from the sofa and one of them from the members' end at Grace Road.

4.03 Your XI is graded against every possible XI in the deal — all 12,376 — and the grade is your percentile among them. Selectors' Note. Of the 12,376, precisely 1,243 cannot be reached by any legal over of changes; the selectors grade against all of them regardless, holding that perfection is not obliged to be attainable. A grade of 100 is the one perfect side. 4.04 Your eleven careers are then combined into a single scorecard, and the selectors name the cricketer it most resembles, taken as one man. This finding is advisory, unappealable, and the entire point.

5.00 — Test Matches

5.01 Two players is 10 Wickets; three, 20; four, 30. 5.02 Every seat receives the identical deal and the identical over of changes, sealed until all have batted — the duplicate principle, borrowed from bridge and dressed in whites. Luck is issued equally and is therefore no excuse.

5.03 The over's winner takes one wicket from each defeated opponent, and is credited by margin: above 50, a single; above 60, two; above 70, a four; above 80, a six. A winning grade of 50 or below is a bye — wickets taken, no runs off the bat. 5.04 A tie is a dead ball: no result, nothing moves.

5.05 First to the target wins — and every champion, at every table, records exactly ten winning overs. All out. The arithmetic permits no other outcome, which is why the Committee chose it. 5.06 Runs are real: they accrue across each match and your whole career of matches.

6.00 — Challenge Links

6.01 A completed solo game compresses into a code of about seventy characters. A rival who opens it plays your identical deal against your ghost, grade for grade.

7.00 — The Selectors

7.01 The Selectors are deterministic: the same deal, from the same seed, is identical on every device on earth. The daily XI is one deal, shared by all. 7.02 The Selectors keep no accounts, sell no notices, and call no third parties. The whole ground is one file.

8.00 — The Averages

8.01 The Averages is the book of the Daily XI. A finished daily is posted as its code; the book replays it with the game's own engine and enters the tally under your name. One statement a day for each deck; the season counts only your best day, so four decks give four chances and no extra credit. The Today page can be read one deck at a time. 8.02 Names are first come, first served. The book keeps nothing about you but a name and a number it invented for your device, and it keeps no accounts of anyone who never posts.

9.00 — Test by Post

9.01 Matches may be conducted by correspondence, identified by a six-character wire code and a seat ticket. Overs stay sealed until every seat has batted. 9.02 Only decisions travel the wire; scores are never transmitted — every device derives the standings by replay.

Law 9.02 Comment: Under this construction a fabricated score is not forbidden. It is unexpressible, which the Committee regards as the superior prohibition.

Historical Note

In the compound of the Chairman's building in Bombay, a ball over the wall and onto the Parekhs' balcony was six — and out, and the Parekhs kept the ball. The same law held in the back garden in Leicester, where it was the Whitlocks and a greenhouse. The Committee has preserved it in Six and Out and takes no responsibility for the Parekhs, the Whitlocks or the greenhouse.

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