CricBay Facts

Cricbay FAQ

CricBays' "Team Ideas" brings you some tips for you to get to know CricBay faster. If you have suggestions/comments or want to join Team Ideas, please do let us know.

I am new to all this.. All I want to do is play cricket.. how do i do what it takes..

Awesome. You have successfully completed the first step by visiting www.CricBay.com. Now,

If you look at the top right corner of the webpage, you will see "register" (or just visit http://www.CricBay.com/register.asp). Go ahead and fill up the form. Please enter as much details as possible. CricBay does not sell anyone's information nor do we let anyone access it.
Once you are done with that and are approved by our beloved webmaster, you can post a message on the forum announcing your availability. Feel free to generously advertise your skills. Refer to "how to post in forum" below.
Next, please visit http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/CricBay/ and request to be a member. one of the admins will approve your request as soon as possible. Do leave a message saying you are a new member while filling the "join the group form".
Once you are approved, just post a message on yahoo group announcing your availability.
Congratulations, you have finished most important steps of starting your weekend cricket warrior career...
Most teams are always looking for players.. Be patient and you will start hearing from people soon enough.
When you log in to the website, you would find a "Join a Team" link under "My Links" through which you can request membership to a team.
The team contacts too can invite members through the "Invite Members" page. This will automatically associate the user to the team.

Posting in CricBay Forum

This is a bit tricky and we promise to make easier and intuitive asap. For now,

If you look carefully enough or search for "Discussion Forum: Latest Posts", you will see a section with lots of posts and rants and what not.
Click on the first post. If you are not logged in, system will prompt you to log in.
Click on "Reply" button.
Change the "Topic" to whatever you want it to be.
Type the message you need to be conveyed.
The site will show you the content before you click on "Submit" button.
If you need anything changed, just click on browser's "back" button and change/modify/delete stuff.
Once you submit, it will be reviewed by one of the admins and then be posted on the site.

Changing Teams

I am not happy with the team I play for.. I need to change teams RIGHT NOW.

We are Sorry to hear that your current team isn't recognizing the inner Kapil Dev or Botham or Lara (dhoni or an adam gilchrist for you keepers) in you. But, You are not allowed to change teams in the middle of a tournament. You can do that only at the beginning (or end) of every season.
If you have decided on the new team, Request your old team (manager/captain/vicecaptain) to remove you from the existing team.
Once you are removed from the existing team, you would see a "Join a Team" link under "My Links" section on the left hand side navigation bar.
Go to the "Join a Team" page and request membership to the team that you are moving to.
The team contacts of the new team will be informed about the request who then can approve/reject the request.
Once your request is accepted, your name would appear on the new teams roaster.
If the process mentioned above is taking a very long time, or if the team contacts do not act upon your requests (hey, they love you and dont want you to leave or may be, they dont really love you and dont want to be a free bird) please email webmaster@CricBay.com and let him know and he will change your team details asap. He is also known to respond quicker if you are nice to him whenever you see him on a cricket ground ;)
Don't even consider that smart and sneaky plan of changing names and playing for another team (yes we always have a few of those). There are too many CricBayers who would call you out on it before you finish the sentence "my name is". There are stiff penalties for you and the team (that winks at you and lets you play) that includes ban from playing CricBay for months together.. Not worth it, i would say.

Registering a New Team

You just discovered your passion for cricket and you also discovered a bunch of people just like you and now you want to form a team and play every weekend. 9or you just thought of a super cool name for a team and now you just have to form a cricket team).. Brilliant, CricBay loves new teams and more teams. Bad news: we do have a procedure and a time line, but the good news: it is not even close to the pain of filling up DMV forms, waiting lines and all that jazz.

Team Name
Home Ground Name and address (yes, you need a home ground.. preferably reserved but if you are sure you can play in a ground uninterrupted, that will work.)
Name, Email, and Phone Number of Captain, ViceCaptain and Manager
Preferred Day: Saturday/Sunday/Either Saturday or Sunday. When the schedule for any CricBay tournament is announced, the home team decides the day of the game and by default, if your team is the home team the day will be set to this day.
Email CoLA(at)CricBay.com with your team name for acceptance confirmation. CoLA reserves the rights for accepting new team registrations (Unless you have invaded a country with/without UN permission or were a investment banker who messed up one of the volunteers' 401k account or have done something really bad, we usually don't deny you. We are cool like that)
Mail the registration fees only after CoLA confirms that your team is cleared to participate in the tournament.
Mail the Registration Fee: check payable to CricBay Inc, PO Box 10424 Pleasanton CA 94588 Mention the team name. Checks should reach the destination before the deadline we announce every year before a tournament.

Documents

Almost always, a lot of us are hungry for knowledge and are inquisitive. We love to know about things, which is awesome (really.. it totally is). But, before you bombard the forum and yahoo group with questions, read the following (like they say in Linux world.. RTFM):

CricBay Rules

CricBay almost always follows ICC rules. But, we are an American (ok.. I just made that up) league and we would like to be different and we have modified a few things. You can get all the details by reading the "CricBay Handbook". It is linked from the website's main page on the bottom left corner. The current version is http://www.cricbay.com/docs/CricBay_Cricket_Handbook_Ver_6_0_030812.pdf
Every CricBay tournament has its own communication document that tells you any change of rules, the format and all that good stuff. Please read through it. If you would like to get details, ask your Captain/VC/Manager first..

Umpiring

My team has volunteered me to umpire a game. WTH!! what do I do ?

CricBay is a volunteer driven community. Everything is done by people that play cricket every weekend. (Yes, It is true.. there are no robots or cute hamsters that do the scheduling, deciding on the format, web site maintenance etc. :))
Go to the web site and download the hand book, Umpiring score sheet (they are linked at the bottom left corner of the main page).
Print them and take them with you on the game day. And do consider reading through the hand book before the game. Trust me, you will not feel good when some random player points a page of the handbook and shows you that you are so wrong :)

Entering score card details

Yay.. Congratulations.. You have won your last game.. Now, you will have to enter the results in two steps. There is brief score card entry and a main score card entry.

How do we enter brief scores?

The link to the brief scores would be enabled on the day of the scheduled game on the "Schedule" page to the team contacts of the participating teams. Brief score entry should not take you more than a couple of minutes. For Round robin games, Winning team is expected to enter the brief scores by 12:00 pm Tuesday following the game. The deadlines for brief score card are Sunday 9PM for all Play off games and Champions trophy. (PS: We will love you more if you enter the brief score card as early as possible. Makes scheduling (the next game) easier.

How do we enter detailed scores?

The link to the details scores would be enabled on the day of the scheduled game on the "Schedule" page to the team contacts of the participating teams. Detailed score entry page is easy to use and for your convenience, can be entered in multiple sessions. Winning team is expected to enter the detailed scores by 12:00 pm Thursday following the game. (PS: We will love you more if you enter the score card as early as possible.

There are some more (hopefully) helpful details here http://www.CricBay.com/howto_enterDetailedScoresheet.asp

What on earth is IEmail that my captain/manager kept talking about and how to use this feature (now that I did this little coup de grace and became a captain myself) ?

IEmail (now, isn't that an interesting name or what.. it surely has some mystery to it) is CricBays' Information Email (hence IEmail) feature that enables that enables easy communication between the participating and the umpiring teams. The link to the IEmail interface would be enabled one week before the scheduled day of the game on the "Schedule" page to the team contacts of the participating teams. The home team is expected to send the IEmail latest by 12:00 pm previous Tuesday of the game.

While initiating the IEmail, the home team must make sure the ground and the day of the game (Saturday/Sunday) is updated unless the ground/day/time is fixed by CoLA(this would usually be for important games like the semis and finals with reserved grounds). The visiting and the umpiring teams should respond to the IEmail confirming the game by Thursday noon. The umpiring teams must update the umpires' name and contact number and add the umpires email to the cc list before responding.

Payments (Team registration, Umpiring no show, delay in score card entries etc.)

I Know, I know.. it feels like you are paying haftha to a bhai of your hood just because you missed an umpiring or couldnt enter that stupid score sheet on time.(hey, Ii was really busy, my girlfriend really made me stay home, that cat really deleted my email, my alarm was turned off by aliens, the score card entry was just eaten up that evil CricBay database). But, these are rules we all have to abide by and pay up when asked :)

Write a check payable to CricBay Inc, PO Box 10424 Pleasanton CA 94588 Mention the team name and the reason (registration fees or penalties etc).
If you are the 21st century person who deals everything online, that's even better. You can ask webmaster for a Google checkout link. Yup, CricBay is hightech :) Note that you have to pay the Google (convenience/transaction) fees though.

Suggestions for improvements, Ideas

So, you had this eureka moment and want to tell everyone about how we can make CricBay even better. That is awesome.
Someone in your team who played in CricBay for a few years looks at you with some kind of pity and says, duuuuude, no point posting anything in the forum or yahoo group. NO one will pay attention.. May be Mr. Sage is right, maybe he is not..
Only way to find out is to send a email with all the details you can gather about your proposal to ideas(at)CricBay.com. We will guarantee a response within 3 days.. You may not like what we think of it (or you might). But you will hear from us. The ideas can be anything from rule changes, to format changes to offer to help writing code for the site, pretty much anything goes as long as it is related to CricBay.

Website issues

Issues? What issues? Check your laptop and internet connection. Everything works fine here... Not really, sh*t happens at times. Dear Mr. Murphy has made sure of that. You just have to email webmaster(at)CricBay.com and please be specific about the problem you are facing.

Miscellaneous

Is it true that the name CricBay was coined by our long term volunteer Ciby who wanted to make his name immortal and made up a word using his name?

Rest of the volunteers are still trying to figure this one out. Like they say, the jury is still out on this one. Currently, the answer is "may be".

-by Sheshu Shenoy on 2 October 2011

4 Comment(s) Add Comment