How CricArcade Decides a Single Delivery Guide
Reproducible, and verifiable
A given match in CricArcade is reproducible from its own starting state, which is what makes a saved career pick up exactly where you left it and what lets the leaderboards verify runs from the raw match record rather than trusting a client. The simulation itself is proprietary; what matters for you as a player is that nothing is decided by the wall clock, only by the match state and the decisions you make.
A batter and a bowler, pulling against each other
Each batter carries how fast they score and how long they survive; each bowler carries how few runs they concede and how often they strike. For every delivery both sides genuinely influence the outcome, so a great bowler bowling to a great batter is a real contest. Neither one alone dictates the ball, which is why an elite attack still gets hit and an elite batter still gets a good one.
A player's overall rating tips the balance, tuned so that a higher rating buys genuine survival and not merely faster scoring, which is the real mark of the best batters. How a career becomes those numbers is covered, at a high level, in how real careers become ratings.
Why context matters on every ball
A delivery is never just batter versus bowler. It is a batter of this quality, on this pitch, in this session, against this ball, in this era, in this match situation. All of that shapes what is likely to happen, in a way you can reason about at the crease. A new batter facing the new ball from a seamer on a green day-one pitch has several things tilted against them at once; a set batter on a flat road in the afternoon has them all working the other way.
How the ball resolves
On any given delivery the possibilities are the ones cricket allows: an extra, a wicket, or a number of runs off the bat. The engine resolves each ball to one of those outcomes, weighted by everything above. A big hitter's share of fours and sixes is genuinely higher than a blocker's; a bowler with a top strike rate takes more wickets per over than a part-timer.
When a wicket does fall, the mode of dismissal is drawn from the shape of real Test and limited-overs cricket: caught is easily the most common, then bowled, then lbw, with stumpings available only to spinners and run-outs kept realistically rare. Catches are not automatic, either. Every fielder has a fielding rating, so a sharp chance to elite hands is put down far less often than the same chance to the tail.
How wickets really fall
The Test archive records how every batter was dismissed, and the mix has changed a great deal. In the 1880s, 48.8% of dismissals were catches and 38.7% were bowled, while lbw accounted for only 4.4%. By the 1970s catches had risen to 61.9% and have stayed close to 61% ever since. Bowled fell steadily, to 20.8% in the 1970s and about 17% today.
The biggest change is lbw. It made up 4.4% of dismissals in the 1880s, around 12% between the wars, 15.5% in the 1980s and 17.1% in the 2000s, when for the first time it was more common than being bowled. Part of that is the law itself, which was widened more than once to give bowlers more, and part is technique: batters who play more with the pad and less with the bat invite the appeal. Run-outs have stayed rare throughout, between about 3% and 4%, and stumpings rarer still, below 2% in modern Tests.
In CricArcade, a wicket takes its form from that real mix, so the kinds of dismissal you see in a simulated Test look like the kinds you would see in a real one.
The DRS overlay
In the modern Test era the engine adds an umpiring layer over the same wicket decision. A small share of genuine lbw and caught dismissals are missed by the umpire, a matching share of not-outs are wrongly given, and some big appeals are correctly turned down. That is exactly the uncertainty the review system exists to resolve, which is why a review prompt in a Test is never a guaranteed wicket: sometimes the finger was right.
The review system in real cricket
The Decision Review System was introduced to Test cricket in 2008 and used across the format from 2009, and it now runs in most international matches. A captain or the dismissed batter can challenge an on-field decision; the third umpire then checks replays, ball-tracking and edge-detection technology. An unsuccessful review is lost, and a side has a limited number each innings, so reviews are a resource to spend carefully.
The most important idea in the system is umpire's call. When ball-tracking shows the ball only clipping the stumps, or pitching or hitting the pad on the edge of the zone, the original decision stands, whatever it was. It means the same delivery can be out or not out depending on what the umpire first said, and it keeps the umpire at the centre of the game. It is also why a review in CricArcade's modern era is a judgement, not a formality.
See it in play
Watch a full innings unfold in The Follow-On, The Chase or the T20 Franchise Manager.
Sources
- CricArcade Test match archive: 2,537 Tests, 1877 to March 2024
- ICC Men's Test Playing Conditions: Decision Review System
- Figures compiled from the official match scorecards in CricArcade's archive