History

There have been two versions of Pub Cricket played on the FPC over the years. It probably started in a rather casual manner on about FPCVII, but evolved into the demon version (known here as Test Cricket) on FPCX. We can’t claim to have invented the game, but we don’t know who did. Nor do we know who instigated it on the pub crawl. The only thing we can be sure of is that I did the scoring, I invented the rules of Test Cricket and I retired hurt after taking on the heavy lagers on the notoriously bumpy wicket at Albert Street, which was ultimately the death of the game. And my front tooth. 

So, if you’ve stumbled across this site and are planning to attempt to play, take my advice and stick to the One Day form of the game. 

One Day Pub Cricket:

Pub cricket in its purest form is a simple game. For every drink you imbibe you score runs, and every time you excrete (sweat excluded) you lose a wicket (or two or three depending on the exact nature of the excretion). A different drink scores a different number of runs, according to the list below:

For a number 1 you lose one wicket, and for a number 2 you lose 2 wickets. Vomiting is a hat-trick, but for various technical reasons this was never enforced (we didn’t come up with the rule until after it was needed). I recommend you play with it in place though.

Bonus Runs are scored for partnerships. If you manage to score 100 runs without losing a wicket you score an extra 10 run bonus. The 10 runs do not count towards the 100. And if you go on to score 200 runs (including the 10 run bonus gained at 100) you get an additional 25 runs. This is where the game is won and lost. We saw Ed White make 200 on a good wicket in FPCIX. He was helped by a set of bunched pubs, a glass of champagne and a colostomy bag.

Test Cricket:

One Day Pub Cricket is heavily weighted in favour of beer drinkers, and was therefore fairly unpopular with those who preferred stronger, smaller drinks. So in the build-up to the grand celebration FPCX the scoring was reassessed to fairly reflect the amount of alcohol drunk and the volume of liquid. The calculation is based on a complicated formula which gives a certain number of runs for the non-alcoholic portion of a drink and 20 times that for the alcoholic portion. So a Pint of 3% beer will score score some runs for the 97% non-alcohol and more runs for the 3% alcoholic quotient. This would have been fearsomely difficult to calculate en route, and so a set of calculation tables was created to provide easy reference on the day. This enabled the scorer to easily find out how much a pint of Stella was worth as opposed to a pint of Fosters. Under ODPC rules they would have both scored 30 runs, but now the Stella (at 5.2%) scored 35 runs and the Fosters (at 3.4%) scored 24 runs.

The scoring system is the only difference between Test and One Day pub cricket. So, what effect did it have? Well, it showed that beer drinkers deserved the previous bias. Put simply they drink more, both in terms of units of alcohol and volume of liquid. For example, a shot of 40% spirit with a large (250ml) mixer only scores 23 runs – less than a pint of Fosters. Large glasses of wine fare better. A 250ml glass of 13% vino scores 33 runs, but not many people drink wine on the FPC.  

Ultimately, the scoring system bit its inventor back. Looking to maximise the runs early in my innings I chugged 6 or 7 pints of Kronenberg in the tightly packed town centre pubs. On leaving the Sports Bar disaster struck and, milli-second after attempting to recreate the low wall leap of FPCIX, I found myself lying on the pavement with a smashed face and half my front tooth hanging on by a tread. This ended FPCX for me, and Pub Cricket forever.
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The scoring cards for FPCX and FPCIX