“Boadiceas Backyard is a small independent company about to launch a completely new cricket board game that involves virtually all aspects of the game including selection, bowling, batting and fielding. Our pre-production prototype has been very well received by our test audiences and so production is now underway,” the publisher said in an email to replaycricket.com.

The game is due to be launched to the world at the famous Essen Spiel in October this year and will undergo extensive play testing in the UK from next month.

We wish the game well and will let you know what we think of it once we have been able to have a play :-)

“Boadiceas Backyard is a small independent company about to launch a completely new cricket board game that involves virtually all aspects of the game including selection, bowling, batting and fielding. Our pre-production prototype has been very well received by our test audiences and so production is now underway,” the publisher said in an email to replaycricket.com.

The game is due to be launched to the world at the famous Essen Spiel in October this year and will undergo extensive play testing in the UK from next month.

We wish the game well and will let you know what we think of it once we have been able to have a play :-)

The seller’s description is: “Not my usual area but trying to clear some room and I have this very scarce table top Cricket game (admittedly from a time when people probably had larger tables in grand houses!). Judging by the picture on the front of the box (Patent Applied For) it is from around 1920/30s vintage with a woman with flapper type hair style and the batsman in his tuxedo. Consists of approx. 2metre green baize/felt pitch with each end weighted by a metal rod, a lovely set of stumps, bails and a beautiful little bat. Rubber ball is not the same vintage! No rules but I guess you make your own regarding boundaries etc. Box has some damage and there is no maker I can see and have not been able to find any info. on line, which led me to believe it is very rare. Baize is showing its age but a very collectible item?”

eBay link is active.

Publisher: Thos. de la Rue & Co. Ltd.

Year: circa. 1930

Marketing blurb: “The Indoor Game of Cricket Played by the Australian Test Team, English Teams and Keen Cricketers Everywhere.”

Description: Stumpz is one of the real classics amongst cricket board games. Created by an unknown designer working for the De La Rue Company, the game appears to have first been released in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

There are many different versions of the game that appeared over the years. I would be guessing the order they were published in, but the game came in at least two size formats – large, with a hard backed board, and small, with a soft cloth or material foldable boards.

The large version comes in what I have deemed the “deluxe” version and the normal version. The deluxe version contains a mounted board made of cardboard (the backing) and felt (the board itself). This deluxe version contains small lead figures for the players, and higher quality wicket indicators and components. The lesser version of the large board contains wooden pegs for players, and a paper front of the board.

The smaller version of the game is in itself, quite lovely even though it was pared back to a foldable cloth board, wooden pegs, and lower quality ball selector and other elements. Even this version is a classic.

The game Wicketz which was popular in the 80s and 90s is an updated version of Stumpz, with more cards, but little variation or improvement over the original.

“Hi, While clearing out my loft I have come across some table cricket figures. I have a batsman that is connected to a plastic arm, there’s is a length of string that attaches to a metal/lead bat. The batsman’s body is attached to the plastic arm but his head and shoulders rotate as you pull on the string. The bowler is also attached to a large plastic stand. in his right hand he is holding what looks like half a ball, his arms rotate. There is a length of plastic like a gutter that the bowler must push the ball down. The rest of the players I have are fielders all in different standing positions. The fielders stands are plastic and are a half moon shape. The fielders have red hats( the batsman is blue), the bowler has no hat. I have 4 figures that look like slips, 5 upright outfield players but no wicketkeeper. There is also some boundary pieces that would have held the card boundary line. There is Velcro on the base of the boundary plastic pieces.
I have looked for ages on the internet and not found any similar. There are no markings on the pieces. I hope you can help me with some information..”

After Rich sent some pics which looked like this …

… I did a short bit of detective work and identified them as figures from a 1960s version of Test Match (thanks Board Game Geek!).

Late last year I was lucky enough to get hold of the complete Minden game – Basic, Advanced, and a full set of Advanced Player Cards. The game plays out overs rather than individual balls but there is still some scope for hat-tricks, collapses, etc. This morning Jeff Thompson of the 1977 Aussies managed a hat trick against the Poms … he tore through their line up with only the late, great, Bob Woolmer showing any kind of resistance (with a tiny tail wag from Derek Underwood).

Once you get used to flipping cards with Minden rather than rolling dice, the game is  incredibly satisfying and as far as I can tell, accurate…and, dare I say it, it’s fun. I’ve enjoyed the sheer drama it can create, which is greater than any other game I’ve played.

And, you can burn through a full Test Match in just a few hours.

As always, I continue to find slow gaming – rolling dice, pushing pencil, adding stats – way more satisfying than booting up the computer and playing a computer game (although I must concede that Rockingham’s Cricket Coach is pretty good, as is Childish Thing’s International Cricket Captain).

Back to the deck.

Created by Paul Friend when he was 12, the game found its way out of his childhood game cupboard recently when his own kids and friends discovered it and started to play. This, according to the game’s web site, encouraged him to publish it and make it available to the wider world.

The game is “designed to replicate game conditions including real life statistics and score keeping Lords of Cricket is fun and educational for kids, improving their maths skills while teaching them the fundamentals of cricket. Great for players of all ages from 7 to 107 Lords of Cricket is a board game to be enjoyed by the whole family.”

The official web site is: http://www.lordsofcricket.com/

A new cricket board game has been popping up in stores all over the UK. I’ve seen it in Playn Games near the British Museum and in the Middlesex CCC store at Lord’s. Haven’t got around to buying it yet, but will.

I was please to see the game’s developer has got his web site up and running, and he’s even posted some advanced and solo rules. Great stuff.

Definately looks better than the run of the mill game. From the Back of the Box it looks like it might have a similar card system to Capri Knock Out Cricket (pictured), but I’ll confirm that or otherwise once I get a copy.

In the meantime, consider buying your own copy of Runs on the Board and support a new game designer!

You can email the designer Norman Franklin at sales@runsontheboard.com or visit their web site at http://runsontheboardcricket.com/

I received an email from Nigel Collier, the fellow responsible for the excellent Wicketz Advanced Rules which I’ve posted on this group, and he’s nearing completition of his own unique cricket game.

While I can’t yet share the visuals of the board and cards, I have seen them and they look very promising indeed. Could the long awaited excellent cricket sim be just around the corner? It’s looking very, very likely :-)

With the game about “80%” complete, Nigel says he will be ready for play testers in a little while, so let me know if you want to be the first to give it a spin!

If you are interested, email me via the contact form.

A lovely collection of games has appeared on eBay from the same fellow who sold the Indian games a week or so ago that went for the extraordinary price of approx £150-160 each. Expect some rigerous bidding for the above games which are from Ariel and Chad Valley.

I plan to email the owner of the collection to see if I can’t find out some more about what is a really fab bunch of games.

He wrote: “I’m trying to find some information on a version of Wicketz I bought at auction some years ago. It is known as  a “world series’ edition, and contains all 30 teams (450 figures!!) in a massively heavy handmade oak cabinet.  I believe only 10 or fewer were ever made…This one has never been played, and is probably unique in that regard.

I’ve a copy of a newspaper article from the 90s which mentions it- apparently John Major and Sir Tim Rice each have one of these editions.”

From the photos Mike sent the 30 teams seem to be the English County teams and the international ODI teams. I will post some images as soon as I can work out how to extract them from Google Mail.

In the meantime, I’ve posted some original reviews of the very first Wicketz incarnation, the limited edition of about 200 games Mr. Compton personally produced. You can see them on our Yahoo! Group.

Note: the following review was originally posted by John as a comment to another post on this site. I have reposted it here for easier viewing.

Game Title: Cricket World

Publisher: Owzat Games

Mechanism: A quickplaying dice and chart game needing just a few readily accessable ratings and a scoresheet to start playing.

Description: I was one of the two main playtesters for Cricket World after Terry Goodchild had devised the game, and found it immensely playable, fun to play, doesn’t take too long to play an entire Test Match or Series, and gives very realistic results off the rating system used in the game.

It’s a quickplaying dice and chart game needing just a few readily accessable ratings and a scoresheet to start playing (the game comes with some ratings already) and you can play Test Matches or indeed any 3, 4 or 5 day matches with the game as purchased.

Ratings convert to how many cards are allocated to the Batting and Bowiling side (black and red suits of cards). It’s part of the Lambourne range of 4/5/6 games meaning action starts on one of those numbers coming up on a dice roll and the said deck of playing cards being used to see which action is started. It maybe the bowler’s card is read, or the batsman’s card and the higher the number rolled the more runs will be scored or the higher the out likelihood.

As the wickets fall the chances of lower order batsmen being out increases and the rate of scoring is likely to decrease for tail enders. Playing defensively, normal, or attacking also affects the likelihood of a batsman being out and the segment length of scoring the given runs, hence the scoring rate.

Runs are scored in segments of overs off the batting card, segments are of varying length subject to which card is activated. Weather and pitch effects come in to play as can special events and bowler types.

The game is a “layer” game, so layer one will give just team scores over the match and take under an hour to play a full 5 day test match. Adding layers 2 and 3 gives batsmens’ scores and then bowlers’ scores respectively, and level 4 adds the pitch and weather rules. A 5 day test at level 4 should be played in about and hour and a half when one is totally familiar with the rules. You may want to play a little slower to feel the flavour of what’s happening at every turn of the match.

The rules show you how to rate your own teams for any time or period to play any match you wish. Note it is TEAM ratings used based on the actual teams batting and bowling abilities, but the game system gives you the higher and lower order scores and bowling off that basic information and end results are very accurately represented.

For those who don’t have the time to play INTERNATIONAL CRICKET which is like ball by ball play, with individual player cards, this game gives you the “highlights” of the match and a much lower playing time (see review of International Cricket on this site by clicking here).

Give it a try – I think you will enjoy it if the above outline review appeals to you. I played a lot of this game in playtesting and still look forward to starting and playing each new match.

John

I kicked off bidding about a week ago at £10 figuring that or thereabouts was a fair price for the game…however, obviously someone else knows better so now I’m really intrigued to know why someone thinks this game is worth so much.

Over the past few years I’ve seen games of the same type, quality go for a wide range of prices. My experience of paying close to £100 for a Subbuteo Test Match when I first discovered it only to see better quality versions of the same thing for for £20-£30 pounds taught me that slow and steady is definately the way to go when collecting.

If you see it once, you’ll probably see it again. But perhaps B.E.D.I is the exception to this as you definately don’t see games from India terribly often. I have a few but they are pretty recent and pretty poor in terms of quality and game play.

So, if you have a gut feel that B.E.D.I is a real gem, why not join Bidder 2 and Bidder 3 in the frenzy and let’s see how high we can get that baby to sell for ;-)

Note: The same seller is selling a few different games at the moment and two from India. The other game, Timpo, is currently at £167!

You can see more of the images here on our sister site on Yahoo! Groups.

It’s described like this on eBay: “This is a fantastic and unusual game from India which I’ve dated at 1954 India Patent 54651. Part of the BEDI Series whatever that means.The box is 40 x 40 x 3 cm and is in good strong condition with no broken corners or splits but minor wear on the corners. The beautifully patterned board measures 40 x 40 cm and is also in excellent condition.

2 teams of weird figures on little pink bases are individually named. The ivory team represents India and the green is Pakistan. Using the names on the bases, Mankad and Roy being two of the better known Indians, I’ve worked out the 1954 date. One pink base on an Indian is missing, otherwise the game is complete.

There are a number of blank score sheets and a wonderfully complex rule book written in both English and Hindi perhaps. It must have been tortuous to play. There are 3 dice, 1 standard 6 sided for runs, 1 strange coloured cube for how out and 1 10 sided shaped thing to show field placings. I think. All 3 dice are thrown at once and the infinite combinations lead the game on its strange course.”

Original eBay link here.

The magazine is the official journal of the Australian Cricket Society, so it was with a lot of enthusiasm that I hurled together a rambling piece about my strange little obsession.

For those who are interested, I’ve posted the two pages as images on this site. You can read page 1 here and page 2 here. Enjoy.