Down the Ground: A Cricket Season at Your Kitchen Table
30 May 2026
A full match of cricket - two innings and a run chase - in about five minutes. The bowler-batsman duel, a side digging in, a collapse from nowhere, a chase that comes down to the last over. That is Down the Ground.
You rate each side once, set the day's conditions, then only ever roll two dice and read a chart. The innings comes five overs at a time, so you watch it build - 50 for 1, a wobble to 90 for 4, three down in a session, a recovery, a flurry at the death. No sums in the middle of a game.
One engine plays the lot. A table library takes you from the old county cup over 60 overs, through the 40 and 50 over one-day game, to the higher-scoring modern format - pick the table that matches the cricket you want and play it the same way every time.
It comes loaded with the 1990 Sunday League: all 17 counties rated off their real season, so Derbyshire win it on bowling, Lancashire score the heaviest, and the table sorts itself roughly the way it did that summer, weather and freak days stirred in.
The chase is the heart of it. As the required rate climbs the batting side has to gamble, and the wickets start to fall. Knock it off with overs to spare, or get greedy and go down in the 38th.
When 1990 runs dry, build your own sides, rate real teams from their averages, or play the fictional village league tucked in the back. Solo or two players.
Print-and-play. All you need is two dice and a pencil.