Eleven names, one keeper, and enough bowling to get through the innings. Pick for a Test, a one-day international or a T20 and the side is judged against that format’s rules — then send it to someone who’ll disagree with it.
Fifty overs a side, and nobody may bowl more than ten. That single rule sets the shape of the team: five bowlers exactly covers the innings, so a side with four is one injury or one bad spell from asking a part-timer to bowl in a World Cup.
The selector’s checklist
A side can be eleven names and still be unpickable. These are the conditions a captain actually works under — the same ones the verdict beside the ground checks as you pick, with the reasoning attached rather than hidden behind a tick.
Format by format
Most of what separates a Test side from a T20 side is not ability, it is arithmetic. How long the innings is, and how much of it any one bowler may take, decides the shape of the team before a single name is written down.
Test
Five days, two innings each, and no limit on how long anyone bowls. A Test side is picked to take twenty wickets — that is the whole job, and it is why four frontline bowlers is the floor rather than a preference.
ODI
Fifty overs a side, and nobody may bowl more than ten. That single rule sets the shape of the team: five bowlers exactly covers the innings, so a side with four is one injury or one bad spell from asking a part-timer to bowl in a World Cup.
T20
Twenty overs, four each, so five bowlers is arithmetic rather than opinion. The harder question is the last two overs: a side full of bowlers who go at twelve at the death has five options and no answer.
Out of a hundred
A rating you cannot check is not worth arguing with, so the whole formula is published — here, and inside the tool itself. It grades the shape of the side and nothing else. Whether Tendulkar belongs ahead of Lara is the argument this page exists to host; it is not one a scoring formula should quietly settle on your behalf.
| What is measured | Points |
|---|---|
| A full side | 30 |
| Bowling covered | 25 |
| Batting depth | 20 |
| A keeper, and one only | 15 |
| An allrounder | 10 |
| Picking the same player twice | −10 each |
Bowling and batting-depth points are scaled against the chosen format, so the same eleven players can score differently as a Test side and as a T20 side. That is not a quirk — it is the whole reason the format switch exists.
Out in the middle
The thirty-yard circle is what makes a limited-overs innings the shape it is: a powerplay with the field up, a long middle period with it spread, and a finish where the captain is defending the boundary. Most explanations of these numbers online get the middle phase of a one-day innings wrong, so here they are exactly.
| Phase | Overs | Outside the circle |
|---|---|---|
| Powerplay | 1–6 | 2 |
| Rest of the innings | 7–20 | 5 |
| Phase | Overs | Outside the circle |
|---|---|---|
| First powerplay | 1–10 | 2 |
| Middle overs | 11–40 | 4 |
| Final powerplay | 41–50 | 5 |
On top of the phase limits, no more than 5 fielders may stand on the leg side at any moment in any format — a law written to stop the leg theory bowling of the 1932–33 Ashes ever being set again. A Test match has no fielding restrictions at all, which is why a Test captain can post four slips and a gully and a one-day captain cannot.
Questions
The checklist follows the conventions a real captain works under, so a side that passes is one you could actually put on the park.
Choose the format at the top — Test, ODI or T20 — then tap a numbered slot. A search panel opens; type any name and pick it, and the builder moves straight to the next empty slot. Eleven slots is eleven taps. Set each player’s role, mark one as captain, and the verdict beside the ground updates as you go.
Yes, and it is deliberate. The top row of the search panel always offers the name exactly as you typed it, so a club team-mate, a retired great or someone who never played a recognised match can go straight into your side. Everything else comes from a directory of more than 17,000 cricketers; picking one of those fills in their role, country and photograph automatically.
Because it changes the rules. Nobody may bowl more than ten overs in a one-day international, so five bowlers is exactly fifty overs and four leaves a gap a part-timer has to fill. A T20 caps a bowler at four, which makes five bowlers arithmetic rather than opinion. A Test has no cap at all and is judged instead on whether the side can take twenty wickets. Switching format re-runs every check against those conditions.
It measures the shape of the side, not how good the players are: a full eleven, bowling that covers the innings, batting depth, exactly one wicketkeeper and at least one allrounder. The full arithmetic is published on the page — tap “How is this scored?” — because a rating you cannot check is not worth arguing with. It deliberately does not rate players against each other; that is the argument this page exists to host, not one it should try to settle.
Three ways. “Send to a group chat” copies a numbered team sheet as plain text, which is the format cricket WhatsApp groups already use. “Save as an image” draws your side as a picture sized for Instagram and WhatsApp Status. “Copy a link” puts the whole side in the web address itself — anyone who opens it sees exactly your team.
Only in your own browser. Nothing is stored on our servers: a shared side travels inside the link itself, which is why a link keeps working indefinitely and why we never see it. Opening somebody else’s link shows their team without overwriting yours. Photographs you upload stay on your device and are deliberately left out of a shared link.
Eleven players, exactly one wicketkeeper, enough bowling to get through the innings, and recognised batting deep enough that losing three early wickets is not fatal. An allrounder is what lets a side carry a fifth bowler without batting one short, which is why the same few names are argued over at every selection.
In a T20, two during the six-over powerplay and five for the rest of the innings. In a one-day international, two for the first ten overs, four between overs eleven and forty, and five in the last ten. No more than five fielders may stand on the leg side at any point in any format. Tests carry no fielding restrictions at all.
Yes — every IPL and Big Bash team page carries the same builder, loaded with that franchise’s squad, and each keeps its own saved side so picking a Chennai XI does not overwrite your all-time team.
Pick from a squad instead
