Cricket club guide
How to run cricket team selection without spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are flexible, which is why clubs keep using them. The problem is that weekly cricket selection quickly becomes a chain of separate tools: availability in messages, teams in a spreadsheet, rules in a PDF, and match planning somewhere else.
Why spreadsheets start to break down
A spreadsheet can hold names in rows and teams in columns, but community cricket selection is not really a spreadsheet problem. It is a coordination problem. A player can be unavailable, restricted, moving between grades, affected by a rule, needed by another team, or part of a two-day match already in progress.
- Availability is stored separately from the team sheet.
- Selectors are copying names between spreadsheets, whiteboards and messages.
- A change to one grade has to be manually reflected in the grades below it.
- Rules, player points or eligibility checks live in another document.
- Once teams are finalised, captains start another planning process from scratch.
A better weekly selection workflow
You do not need to make selection complicated. You need one source of truth for the week and a clear order of work.
1. Start with the whole week
Put every team and fixture for the round in one view before selecting any individual XI.
2. Record availability before selection
Treat availability as selection data, not a separate conversation. Make restrictions, uncertainty and unavailability visible beside the player.
3. Select in the order your club actually works
For cascading senior grades, select top-down. For independent teams or junior pools, keep those structures independent instead of forcing everything into one spreadsheet.
4. Keep checks beside the decision
If points, age rules, grade movement or other checks matter, show them while the team is being built rather than after the meeting.
5. Finalise clearly
Make it obvious which teams are still drafts, which are ready, and which have been finalised.
6. Carry the team into match planning
The final XI should become the starting point for batting, bowling and game-day planning rather than another manual copy-and-paste job.
Practical rule
The selector should not have to remember where the information lives.
If availability, form, points, rules and recent team history all matter to the decision, they should be visible where the selection is happening. That reduces switching between tabs, documents and conversations and makes the meeting easier to follow.
What should replace the spreadsheet?
The replacement does not need to be a giant club-management platform. For selection, the useful core is straightforward: fixtures, availability, a player pool, multiple team structures, selection checks, finalisation and a hand-off into match planning.
That is the workflow ClubHub is built around. It can sit alongside PlayHQ rather than replacing the official competition system.