Palmcricket Manual

The Main Screen and Scoring Overview

When Palmcricket is launched by tapping on it's icon, the main scoring screen shown here is displayed. It looks very "busy", but one soon gets used to it. The various components are described below:

Match status: At the very top, the screen title displays the match status, in this case "In progress". Various messages indicating breaks in play, end of an innings, match completion, etc. will be displayed here to show the current status of the match. Buttons and events will behave differently, depending on the match status. The clock timer on the left in the title line displays elapsed time for the match, day, innings or session, as per preference. In this case, the "i" indicates the elapsed time for the innings is 1 hour, 51 minutes and 19 seconds. The clock timer on the right displays the actual time of day, i.e. the time is just after 11 o'clock in the morning. Clocks are updated every second as the match progresses (but not on older handheld models that do not support sophisticated clock handling). On the extreme top right, the small information icon About can be tapped to display an "about" screen that displays website/e-mail addresses, a copyright message and the program version and date.

Batting team: Immediately below the title, the screen displays 4 lines of batting details for the team currently batting. The first line, in bold type, shows the team name (e.g. Australia) and total score (0 wickets for 134 runs). The next two lines show the the batting order, names and scores of the two batters currently at the crease (Justin Langer on 56 and Matthew Hayden on 70). The batter on strike (Hayden) is indicated by a tick in the block to the left of the batter. The last line of batting detail gives a breakdown of total wides (1), no-balls (4), byes (1) and leg-byes (2), with the total extras (8) shown on the very right.

Changing the strike: The batter on strike can be changed by tapping anywhere inside the batter's name or tick-box. Pay careful attention to which batter is on strike. Normally, the strike would change intelligently, except in the case of no-balls, wides and dismissals, where the scorer may need to override the setting by tapping on the correct batter's name.

Completed overs: The next line shows the total overs completed (32.6), the run rate per over (4.06), penalty runs awarded to the fielding side (pf) and penalty runs (pb) awarded to the batting side.

Bowling detail: The middle part of the screen shows bowling statistics for the team currently bowling. The team name (e.g. South Africa) is displayed in bold type-face. Batting scores for all innings completed previously by this team are also shown on the same line (10/277). The next line shows the number, name and bowling analysis for the current bowler (5. Claud Henderson 2.6 overs 0 wickets for 11 runs). The next line shows the current over in progress. To the left of the equal sign the ball-by-ball breakdown for the over is shown (1.L1.n1.w1.b1.o.4.o). The total runs conceded by the bowler (7) is displayed between the equal sign and the plus sign, whereas other runs not credited to the bowler, i.e. byes and leg-byes, (2 in total) are displayed to the right of the plus sign.

Buttons: The 29 buttons at the bottom of the screen can be divided into 4 main groups: scoring buttons, shift buttons, edit buttons and miscellaneous buttons, as described below:

Scoring buttons: The numbered buttons shown left are the active scoring buttons. One tap on any of these buttons will immediately credit the runs to the batter currently on strike, shown by a tick next to the batter's name. See scoring normal runs for more detail. The left arrow, also referred to as the back-space or undo button, shown at the bottom left of the main screen, allows one to delete the last event recorded. It deletes all traces of the event, so normally one would use this to correct mistakes immediately after tapping the wrong button. There is no re-do facility, any events thus erased can be re-instated by normal scoring. All events in the ball-by-ball database can be erased backwards, right up to the start of the match, if desired (see also correcting errors). The Over button is used to indicate the end of a normal over, whereas the Bowler button allows one to make a mid-over bowling change and to Corret a wrong bowler selected at the start of the over, without having to re-score the over. Breaks in play can be started and completed at any time by tapping on the Stop button. During stoppages, the label of this button changes to Start. This button is also used to complete an innings and start a new one. One can score up to 4 innings in a match. There is no restriction on number of overs (within reason, i.e. it can handle all 4 innings of a test match comfortably). Equally, Palmcricket does not restrict which team bats in which innings, as it will comfortably allow the same team to bat in successive or all innings, or any combination of team and innings.

Shift Buttons: These buttons all operate as shift keys: on their own they do nothing, except to supply a different context to the scoring buttons. When any of these buttons are "on", they will be highlighted. Tapping one of the run buttons will then trigger the highlighted event, eg with the w button highlighted, a tap on the 1 button will record one wide. Similarly, when the Out button is on, a tap on any run button (dot, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or >6) will trigger a dismissal event and the Out window will pop-up. The Out button can be on simultaneously with any of the extras buttons, in order to trigger dismissals with extras, whereas only one extras button can be on at a time. If the shift button was tapped by mistake, simply tap it again to remove the shift effect. Refer to the sections on extras and dismissals for more detailed descriptions of these functions.

Edit buttons: The Match, Team1 and Team2 buttons are normally used at the start of the match to edit the match and player details. They may also be used at any time during the match, to save a team sheet, correct player names etc. (see step 4 under the section starting a new match). The Edit button allows one to correct minor scoring mistakes anywhere in the match (see ball-by-ball editing).

Miscellaneous buttons: The buttons on the right of the scoring block are used for various queries, analyses and non-scoring activities. At the top, are two Help buttons. The Bat button displays battings summaries for any innings, whereas the Bowl button provides bowling statistics. A number of additional utilities are accessed by tapping on the Utils button. These include printing, registration, archiving, cumulative graphs, Manhattan skylines and target settings.