The Cricket Auction Day Run Sheet

An auction is a live event. Most of what makes it feel professional happens before anyone bids, and almost none of it is about the software.

This is a run sheet. Work backwards from the first player going up.

The week before

Confirm the players. Message every registered player and ask them to confirm they will play. A player who is sold and then vanishes costs a team money and costs you an argument. Remove anyone who does not confirm, or move them to a clearly labelled reserve list.

Confirm the owners. Every team needs one nominated person who will bid, and a backup. Get both names.

Send the rules. The rules template covers the clauses that cause trouble. Send it as a document, not a voice note. Ask for a reply confirming they have read it.

Set the numbers. Budget, base price, squad size and the bid ladder. Check them with the purse calculator rather than guessing, and check specifically that filling a minimum squad at base price leaves real bidding room.

Decide the running order. If you are using player categories, decide which comes first. Marquee players first sets the market and drains money early. Marquee players last means teams bid on them with what is left. Both work; pick one deliberately.

The day before

Lock the pool. Add every confirmed player, with role and base price. Late additions on the night are how a player ends up in nobody's squad.

Do a dry run. Put one test player up, take two bids, hammer, then reset the auction. Fifteen minutes now is worth an hour of doubt later. Reset clears the outcomes, so nothing from the test survives.

Check the room. A screen everyone can see, a plug for the laptop, and a table for the person running the software.

Check the connection. The auction is live, so it needs a connection that stays up. Test the venue's wifi at the time of day you will actually be there, and have a phone hotspot ready as a fallback.

Print or export a backup list. Export the player list as a PDF. If something goes wrong you can keep the night moving on paper and reconcile afterwards.

Two hours before

Two people, two jobs. One person calls the auction, the other works the software. One person doing both is slower and every mistake is harder to undo.

Seat the owners so you can see them. A raised hand you cannot see is a bid you did not take.

Open the owner links. Each owner opens the team hub on their phone. They will see their remaining budget and the most they can safely bid, which stops most of the "can we afford this" questions before they are asked.

Put the public screen up. The spectator view shows the player on the block, the current bid and every team's remaining purse.

The first five minutes

Say the rules out loud. Budget, base price, increments, what happens to unsold players, and who decides a contested bid. Thirty seconds each. Nobody will read the document again, but they will remember hearing it.

Start with a middling player, not the best one. The first lot is where the room works out how bidding feels. Burning your marquee player while everyone is still hesitant sells them cheap.

During

Keep the rhythm. Name, role, base price, take bids, going once, sold. A steady pace matters more than a fast one.

Say the price at every raise. The screen shows it, but the room listens more than it looks.

Watch for the quiet teams. A team that has not bid for twenty minutes is either out of money or has lost track of the plan. Either way, telling them where they stand keeps the auction competitive.

Use pause deliberately. If there is a dispute, pause, resolve it, resume. Do not try to sort it out while bids are still arriving.

Correcting a mis-click. The right price on the wrong team is a normal mistake. Fix it by selecting the correct team at the price on the board rather than restarting the lot; the correction is checked against that team's budget and squad in exactly the same way a bid is.

After the hammer falls

Check every squad meets the minimum. If one does not, apply the rule you announced.

Export the squad sheets. PDF per team, which is what owners actually forward to their players.

Share the public page. Every team, every squad, every price, on one link. It answers the questions that otherwise arrive one at a time for two days.

Write down what went wrong. The base price that was too low, the category that dragged, the increment that made the room impatient. Next season's auction is set up in ten minutes if you kept notes.

The short version

1. Confirm players and owners in the week before.
2. Send the rules and get a reply.
3. Set and check the three numbers.
4. Dry run the software the day before.
5. Two people, two jobs.
6. Read the rules aloud at the start.
7. Middling player first.
8. Export the squads and share the public page before anyone leaves.