Hitwicket Game

Hitwicket is an online cricket team management game developed by Octathorpe Web Consultants. It allows a user to own a T20 team like Indian Premier League and take all the strategic decisions involved in running the team.
The game was launched in May 2012 as private Beta and the registrations were opened to public after six months. In no time, the game had 35,000 addictive users spread throughout the world. According to Alexa Internet Hitwicket.com is among the top 2500 websites in India and top 20000 globally.
History
The game was founded by Kashyap Reddy and Rishav Rastogi. Both studied B.Tech in Computer Science from VIT University. Development of the game started in mid-2010 and it went live on 1 June 2012. Soon, after the release both of them realised that they needed to hire new talent to keep up the pace with which they were growing. They hired two developers- Saurabh Maheshwari and Rajat Singhal from their alma mater
Gameplay
As soon as a user signs up, he is assigned a T20 team and is taken through a 10 minute comprehensive tutorial. The tutorial helps the user in understanding the finest nuances of the game. Immediately after the tutorial, the user is taken into the core of the game i.e. Matches. He can play 4 friendly matches per day in the FRESHERS LEAGUE until his manager reputation level becomes Reliable or Above
Leagues
The user's team is put into a local League,after his reputation level becomes Reliable or Above,in which it competes against 9 other teams for a season. A season spans across 10 weeks with each having 2 matches. Each team plays an opponent twice. Once at the Home Stadium and once on the opponent's stadium. The leagues are grouped into divisions. The league topper at the end of the season gets promoted to a higher division.
Team
Initially, a team consists of 16 fictitious players with each having different skills like Batting, Bowling and Fielding. The skill levels vary from player to player. In addition to skills, a player also has attributes like Fitness, Form and Age that affect his match performance.
Match
Before a match, a team manager needs to select the playing XI for a game, set up the line based on skills and form of the players.A team manager can't change his line up before 1 hour of the match. When the actual match takes place, the manager needs to sit back and enjoy the extremely engaging Ball by Ball commentary. A match takes place with the help of Match Engine which is a complex mathematical algorithm, which takes into account all the attributes of players like Form, Fitness, Skills, Age and Pitch Type of the stadium and generates the result. It uses several mathematical concepts like Statistics and Probabilities.
Management Decisions
This is the most interesting and engaging part of the game which makes it stand out from the hordes of other existing Cricket Games.
Player Auctions
A team acquires new players and gets rid of existing players through player auctions. Every 24 hours, more than a thousand players get sold. Auctions are live 24 by 7. A manager can go to auctions and bid on any player he wants and he will be competing against hundreds of managers sitting around the world. By default, a player remains on auction for 72 hours. A manager can also put any of his players on auction at a Base Price that he feels is right.
Player Training
Just like in the real world, players receive training every week for improving their skills. There are different training types like Seam Bowling, Spin bowling, Batting, Fitness, Fielding training etc. The speed at which a player improves in skills is determined by his age and the training facilities made by the team manager.A player will train faster if the training facility is upgraded.
Stadiums
Every manager has a stadium for his team. He can change its name, add or remove number of seats and relay the pitch. The larger a stadium and the fan base of two competing teams, the more fans would be able to see the game. The home team manager would earn the ticket money and also ought to pay the stadium expenses
Youth Scout
Every team manager has a fictitious assistant manager who travels around the world to discover the talented youth players who can be future legends. The team manager has the option to either sign up the youth or send him back for training.At the start of the game, you can only scout in India
Rankings
As of Alexa rankings, Hitwicket is currently 22,933th rank in the world and 2,416th rank in India and 1,408th in Pakistan.
Community
Hitwicket,at its core, is a multi player game which is played by players from all over the world online. The community is a very important part of such a game. Team managers interact with each other, discuss topics related to Hitwicket as well as any random topic under the sun with other managers. This helps people to make friends from different cities and countries. This community is so strong that not only school or college students, but also working professionals in their 30s and early 40s are the most active bunch of people on the discussion forum. Tens of Hitwicket meet-ups have taken place in several cities in India and most of them were initiated by users.
Press Coverage
The game has been covered by YourStory and The Hindu

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