Your Ranked XI

1. Take over a club

In Club, take over one of the franchise sides in the four leagues. Its squad, colours and place in the league become yours. You also get custom slots for players you make or bring through the Academy.

2. The transfer market

There are two markets, both paid for with the coins you earn from every match and every event you play.

The league

Buy, sell or swap with the computer-run sides in your league, or sign a free agent.

• Prices go by rating first, then age. A side's three best players cost 30% more.
• To give a sense of scale: an 80-rated player costs about 93,000 coins, an 85 about 230,000, a 90 about 575,000. A 95 is about 1.7 million, and a 99 about 4 million.
• The Academy brings new young prospects every Monday. They start lower and grow toward a ceiling. Journeys and Pathways speed that up.

Other managers

Put one of your players up for sale to every other manager, or buy one they've listed. It's open to everyone in the beta.

• Set your own price, within a range for his rating and age: from 60% to 160% of what the league values him at. Nobody can give a star away to a friend or ask a fortune for a squad player.
• He leaves your squad while he's listed, for up to 48 hours. If nobody buys him, he comes back.
• The first manager to buy him gets him. The market keeps 5% of the price, and the rest is waiting for you the next time you open the market.
• Up to five of your players can be listed at once.

3. Build your Ranked XI

Your Ranked XI is kept apart from your league XI. Pick it from everyone you have: your club's squad, its Academy and custom players, and your My Career player.

• Every player has a ranked value. It climbs steeply with his rating, and a little more for his traits and craft.
• The XI's total must be 520 or under, the same cap for every club. A superstar uses up a lot of it, so he needs cheaper players round him.
• Eleven players with a keeper, five who can bowl, and no more than four overseas players.
• Best XI under the cap picks the strongest side that fits, as a place to start.

The cap is what makes it fair. Whoever spent the most coins doesn't automatically win: the manager who builds the better side does.

The squad screen

• Your XI is laid out as cards, in batting order. Tap a card to pick him up, then tap another to swap them: up or down the order, or with a reserve.
• Below the XI are five reserves, for sixteen in the squad, as in an international squad. Reserves don't count against the cap; the XI that takes the field does.
• Choose the roles: the captain, the keeper when you have two, and two bowlers saved for the death. When the computer sets your bowling, in a simulated spell or when you let it, those two bowl the last overs.
• Save up to three squads and pick the one in play: a side for the Ladder's ten overs, another for the Weekend Series' twenty.

Chemistry

Players who know each other play better together. Each player earns up to three chemistry points: one for two or more team-mates from his country (two for four or more), and one for a team-mate from a league side he played for. That's 33 at most.

• At 22, every player in the side gets a point on every rating for the match. At 30, two.
• A side built round one club and one country gets there. An all-star XI bought from everywhere doesn't. That's the trade-off.
• In Live 1v1 the server works out each side's chemistry from the side itself, so both games play the same lift.

4. The Ladder

Ten-over games against a club at your level. There are ten divisions with Elite above them.

• A win earns 100 Ladder Points, more on a winning run. A tie earns 40. A loss costs 50, or 25 in the bottom three divisions.
• Divisions 7, 4 and 1 are checkpoints: once you reach one, you can't drop below it.
• The week runs Monday to Sunday. Your best division of the week pays on Monday, up to 120,000 coins for Elite.

5. The Weekend Series

Six twenty-over games from Friday to Monday night. Win four Ladder games in the week to qualify. The more you win, the tougher it gets, and your final rank pays up to 180,000 coins.

Playing Live 1v1

Every Ladder and Weekend Series game can be against the computer or live against another manager's Ranked XI, for the same points.

1. Take over a club in Club, if you haven't yet.
2. Go to Compete, then Ranked, and open the Ladder or the Weekend Series.
3. Check the squad in play. If it's over the cap or missing a keeper or bowlers, the screen tells you what to fix.
4. Choose Live 1v1, then Find a Live 1v1.
5. On the Ladder you're paired with a manager within three divisions of you, or anyone after about fifteen seconds. Every side is under the same cap, so the match is even whoever you meet. In the Weekend Series it's whoever is next.
6. Both sides send their Ranked XIs. The manager who waited longest hosts the match at his ground, and it starts on both screens.
7. One bats while the other bowls, then you swap. The server checks that both games finished with the same result before the points count.

Live 1v1 needs another manager searching at the same time. During the beta, while few people are playing, a friend room is the surest way to get a game. Leaving a live game under way counts as a loss and costs coins: see fair play.

Kept apart

Ranked games have their own stats on the Ladder's Stats tab. They never go into your players' records.