2024 T20 Cricket Custom Cards: Another “Because Nobody Asked For It” Project!

Quickie answer to “Why???”: I’ve been following the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup this month and normally when I’m learning a new league or sport, having cards helps me remember who the players are… but there ARE no cards or stickers specific to this World Cup that I can find, not even from other countries, so I’m making my own.

You may have heard that the USA, in their first time in the T20 World Cup, pulled off a surprising upset of Pakistan and have moved on to the Super 8, the next round of the tournament. That round begins this morning with the United States facing South Africa.

Having watched a pair of Major League Cricket (MLC) matches last year, I was already interested in this year’s World Cup.  I was further intrigued as an expat Long Islander because of the pop-up stadium which had been built in “New York” – actually an hour outside of Manhattan in Nassau County’s Eisenhower Park. Side note: That stadium is already being dismantled as all the remaining matches take place in the West Indies (Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Antigua & Barbuda).  This World Cup is being co-hosted by the West Indies and the United States.  Next time around, in 2026, it will be hosted by India and Sri Lanka.

When the USA/Pakistan match was being played last Thursday morning I had it on in the background while I was working, but had to turn it off because the match was getting far too interesting and I wasn’t getting my work done. As the momentum shifted, you could see the US players realizing “Hey, we can DO this!”. You can keep your basketball dream teams, I think it’s far more fun to have a “Miracle On Ice” type of situation.

The World Cup runs through the end of June, and a few days later Major League Cricket (with teams representing Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Texas and Washington DC) will take place from July 5th to July 28th. I’ll get into more details further down in this post, but first let me share a bunch of the customs I’ve made.

We’ll start with USA team captain Monank Patel, who is originally from India but has lived in the US for 8 years. He scored 50 runs against Pakistan and was named Player of the Match. Next month he’ll be playing in MLC for MI New York.

Aaron Jones was born in Queens, NY but grew up in Barbados. In the first match against Canada he hit for 94 runs. He’s acting as captain of the team since Monank Patel is injured. Last year he played for MLC’s Seattle Orcas but he doesn’t seem to be on a MLC roster this year.

Saurabh Netravalkar’s bowling has gotten a lot of attention, but even beyond that he’s got an interesting story; he was on India’s Under 19 team but didn’t have many prospects to advance so he moved to the US, got a Masters degree from Cornell University and stayed to pursue software engineering. He currently is on hiatus from his “day job” with Oracle. He’s also on the roster of MLC’s Washington Freedom.

Steven Taylor was born in Florida to Jamaican parents and has played for the US National Cricket team since 2010. His MLC team is MI New York.

I’ll touch on a few of the notable players from the South Africa team as well…

Quinton de Kock is one of the top players and a name I can remember from last year’s MLC (and you can guess why). He’ll play for the Seattle Orcas next month.

David Miller is another one I’ve picked up on as a key player on this team. He’s with the Los Angeles Knight Riders

Heinrich Klaasen seems to be the Cricket equivalent of a Power Hitter. He’s also with the Seattle Orcas.

I could go on with a number of other customs, but I’ve probably already lost most of my readers at this point.  I plan on doing more of these posts, regardless of the interest this one gets.

By the way, if you have a request for a particular custom, feel free to leave a request in the comments.  I may be limited by what images I can find.

---

“How can I watch some cricket?” you might ask. Well… Despite talk of growing the game in the US, it’s not readily available to the cricket-curious. The games are broadcast by Willow TV, which is carried as part of the higher-end sports packages through cable/dish/streaming providers. In my case, I’m paying $10 a month to stream it separately and will deactivate my account after MLC is over.  I started out thinking of it as a $10 pay-per-view event, but I’ve certainly gotten my money’s worth.  They also have game “summaries” which you can watch for this and other recent events… I put “summaries” in quotes because it’s really a condensed version of the entire match and the summaries generally run a half hour.

Last year CBS Sports Network picked up the Willow broadcast for two Major League Cricket matches and I’m hoping someone does something similar this year… but I haven’t heard anything yet. Be warned: Since these broadcasts are meant for international cricket-loving audiences, they explain NOTHING for newbie viewers. Mrs. Shlabotnik and I are both analytical people, so we’d enjoyed the challenge of figuring out what was going on, why that guy was out, what the stats mean, and so on.

---

A Overly Simplistic Attempt to Explain T20 Cricket to Baseball Fans

Cricket is just similar enough to baseball that you feel like you should be able to pick it up, but you probably won’t. YMMV, but I needed help to put some of the pieces together… But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it regardless.  A nice catch is a nice catch and a moon shot is a moon shot, whether it’s cricket or baseball.

BTW, I’m leaving out a ton of details and I’m sure I’ll get stuff wrong, so feel free to call me out on it in the comments.

SO… There’s a bowler (think ‘pitcher’) and he throws the ball – on a bounce – to the batter. Hitting the ball far is usually good. Hitting the ball so that someone catches it on the fly is bad – that’s an out. There are other ways a batter can be out, I won’t get into that here.

Once a batter is out, he can’t bat any more and gets replaced by a teammate.

Instead of taking turns batting, one team bats until they’ve seen 120 balls bowled to them OR until 10 of their batters are out. (Outs are also called Wickets). The second team then bats until they’ve scored more runs than the first team OR they’ve faced 120 balls OR 10 of their batters are out.  However it plays out, the team with the most runs is the winner.

Scoring:

If a ball goes over the field’s boundary on the fly, like a home run, that’s six runs. It’s also called a Sixer.

If a ball reaches the boundary but has touched the ground first, that’s four runs.

If a ball is hit and is not a four or a six, the two batsmen (there’s always a ‘partnership’ of two batters) run between the two wickets as many times as they can without getting out. That usually is anything from no runs to two runs per batted ball.

Again, I’m leaving out a LOT and I hope I’m not hurting more than I’m helping.  Feel free to ask if you have questions, but I’ll confess I’m still learning a lot about the game.

---

Card Design Corner (For anyone thinking “that design looks familiar…)

For these customs I used a tweaked version of the 1974-75 Topps Basketball design.

Part of the reason I used this design was because I had an intent to use the colorized photos for the background, like on the Mike Jackson card above.  I wasn’t entirely happy with the way it turned out for me, it just looked like a mottled background instead of a colorized photo.

I went with a solid background instead, and just for the record, the ‘solid’ background is not truly solid, but actually made from scans of actual cards with solid backgrounds.  I think it add a subtle – perhaps too subtle – texture which gives a vintage feel to the image.

I replaced the yellow basketball of the original with a line art version of a cricket ball and, because I’m still learning the game and don’t know what I’m doing, I left out positions entirely.

I couldn’t satisfactorily replicate the vertical team name so I changed it completely.  The way I did it works a little better for longer names like “UNITED STATES” than for “IRELAND” or “INDIA”, but it is what it is.