Cricinfo Fantasy Cricket goes Twenty20

Cricket's latest version comes of age next week with the ICC World Twenty20 in South Africa and Cricinfo makes you part of the action with Fantasy Cricket. A huge success during the World Cup earlier this year, it returns in a format more suited to the exciting, hectic pace of Twenty20 cricket, and most important - it's free. The game surely has got everyone hooked - over 10000 users registered here within the first five days to create nearly 13000 teams.

Given the lack of sufficient data - only 19 internationals have been played till date - we've gone through a detailed process to work out scoring rules and categorising players for Fantasy Cricket, as the conventional rules of Test and one-day cricket hardly apply to the 20-overs a side game.

There's one major change regular Fantasy players will notice: no points will be deducted for runs conceded by a bowler. It's a change we debated a lot but we gave bowlers the leeway as continuing with the rule would see most bowlers end up in the red. In any case, we have tried to balance the points-scoring opportunities for batsmen and bowlers and since runs scored and strike-rate for a batsman equate with wickets taken and economy rate for the bowlers, runs conceded seemed a redundant option.

Although we do concede that Fantasy players may prefer batsmen and allrounders as they earn more points than bowlers (which reflects in the team combinations having a maximum of three bowlers), we have used data to ensure that a batsman and bowler making equitable contributions in a match earn a similar number of points.

Fantasy players may wonder over the categorisation of many key players as allrounders and the costlier valuations overall. However, we have tried to be cautious; Yuvraj Singh and Tillakaratne Dilshan have been listed as batsmen and Virender Sehwag and Sanath Jayasuriya as allrounders, to ensure you don't run out of options. Values are also determined by factors such as position in the batting order, so prospective openers are costlier than those batting lower down.

All this analysis might sound boring but Cricinfo Fantasy Cricket will not. Cheer for your Trump Player as he earns you double the points and applaud the Man of the Match if you have him, as he gets a bonus. Fours, sixes, dot balls, maidens, ducks - all of them have a role to play. And then there's the small matter of milestone bonuses.

And to get in on the fun all you need to do is register and create a team and, once the ICC World Twenty20 kicks off, check on the team as often as possible. Simple as that. The rest is fantasy.