The rules of the four a side tournament are as follows:

1. Each team comprises of 4 players, 3 of whom can bowl and one
   wicketkeeper. Every group of 4 people should send the name of their
   team (eg: Portland Pigeons, Networks Nerds), full name of the 4 players
   mentioning who the wicketkeeper is and any other comments about your
   team to puneet@catarina.usc.edu.

2. Each team will bat for 6 overs. A batsman cannot retire in any 
   other circumstance (except if he's injured). If the team
   is all out (3 wickets have fallen), the batsman who got out first comes
   back to bat and the cycle repeats until 6 overs are finished. Every  
   wicket results in 5 debit points for the batting team. The runs they
   score including extras go into their credit points. 

3. The runs a bowler gives away goes into the bowler's team's debit
   points and if he clean bowls a batsman his team gets 5 credit points.
   A wide ball is a counted ball and the bowler's team gets 6 debit points 
   and the batsman's team 6 credit points. A no ball(overstepping, 
   understepping, sidestepping, chucking or one bounce above HEAD height of
   the batsman or full pitch above waist height of the batsman) is a counted
   ball and the bowler's team gets 6 debit points and the batsman's team
   6 credit points. A catch results in 3 credit points for the bowler's team
   and 2 credit points for the catcher's team. If the ball is bad and the
   catch spectacular, the bowler's team may get 1 credit point and the 
   catcher's 4 credit points (the umpire will decide the precise partition of
   5). The idea is to have sum of the overall points of all teams = 0 where
   overall points of a team = credit points - debit points. So batting,
   bowling, fielding and keeping all contribute to your overall points.

4. Run out's credits are divided amongst the teams of the players who were
   invloved in the runout (again, the exact partition of 5 is decided by
   the umpire). 

5. There are exactly 8 fielders on the field when the game is on. A
   batting team bats for 2 sessions, each session has 3 overs. In each
   session, two teams other than the batting team will take the field.

The precise sessions plan (i.e., who bats, bowls and fields in which
session) is based on modulo arithmetic to enable smooth functioning of the
game and to make it a fair game. It is not important for you to understand
this to play the game. The organisers will tell you exactly when to bat,
bowl and field. If you're not interested in the sessions plan, jump to
the starred line by scrolling down. For those interested (and the
organisers, i.e., TCC office bearers better be interested :-)), here is an
example of 5 teams playing the tournament, let's call them teams 0,1,2,3
and 4. 

We have a total of 30 overs, 6 for each batting team.
There are 10 sessions Session[i][j] for 0<=i<=4 and j=0 or 1

Teams bats in the order Team 0, Team 1, Team 2, Team 3 and Team 4.

For all 0<=i<=4, 
When Team i is batting, its two sessions will be named Session[i][0] and
Session[i][1].

Session[i][0]: Team (i+1) mod 5 and Team (i+2) mod 5 take the field,
               Team (i+1) mod 5 bowls 3 overs in this session.

Session[i][1]: Team (i+2) mod 5 and Team (i+3) mod 5 take the field,
               Team (i+2) mod 5 bowls 3 overs in this session.

Thus, one team will be dormant during the 2 sessions(6 overs) of each
batting team. Two guys of this dormant team will umpire while the other
two will keep scores.

Note that team i takes the field during consecutive sessions: 
Session[(i+2) mod 5][1], Session[(i+3) mod 5][0], Session[(i+3) mod 5][1]
ans Session[(i+4) mod 5][0].
Team i will bowl in 2 consecutive sessions Session[(i+3) mod 5][1] and
Session[(i+4) mod 5][0].

This is not really complicated. The positions of each team are pre-decided
during each session. We need 10 sheets of paper, one for each session.
The team that is assigned scoring for two consecutive session wil be given
the two sheets for those sessions in which they only have to mark credit
points for the batting team and debit points for the bowling and fielding
teams. We don't keep track of individual scores, extras, bowling analysis
etc. Only debit and credit points are noted after each ball in the
respective columns of the teams that are involved.

If there are 6 teams, we work in modulo 6 arithmetic. Please email me if
you'd like to be an organiser. I guess Puneet and I are automatic
organisers but we'll need more guys to help out. Also, if there are any
mistakes in the above sessions plan, let me know. I also look forward to
suggestions for improving the sessions plan.

*****************************************************************************

These rules are still raw and there may be a few flaws in them, please
point out any flaw you see and do suggest improvements to me.

-Ashwin
 ashwinra@cs.usc.edu