About Play 16-0
An independent historical stats game.
Play 16-0 is a deterministic draft simulator built on Indian T20 league player-season data from 2008–2026.
The idea
Every cricket fan has an all-time XI they will defend at length and never have to prove. Play 16-0 exists to make them prove it. Assemble a legal XI under the salary cap, hand it to the engine, and watch it play a full 16-match season. Win all sixteen and you have a claim nobody can wave away. Lose once and the perfect season is gone — there is no partial credit, and that is the entire point.
The scarcity is real. Only a small fraction of every season ever simulated here has finished 16-0, and the running count sits on the home page for anyone who wants to check the odds before they start.
Who builds it
Play 16-0 is built and maintained by Rohit, its creator, as a solo and independent project — the same byline that runs on the blog’s guides and rankings. There is no studio behind it, no publisher, and no outside funding. The game is free, it runs on servers paid for out of pocket, and the only money that touches it is the voluntary contribution page that helps cover those bills. Nothing there affects gameplay.
Where the numbers come from
The book behind the game holds 3,197 player-seasons drawn from two decades of Indian T20 league cricket, 2008 to 2026. The unit is not a cricketer but a cricketer in one particular year: a record-breaking campaign and a quiet rebuilding one are separate cards, priced differently, because on the field they were different players.
Every one of those seasons was read and rated by hand against the public record — runs, wickets, strike rates, economy rates that anyone can look up — rather than generated in bulk. The stat line and the salary you see on a card are the same figures the engine uses to simulate. Nothing on a card is invented. How we rate a season sets out the full reasoning, including what we publish and what we deliberately keep private.
Four ways to play
Normal shows every stat and gives you a 125 Cr purse — the mode to learn on. Expert hides the stats and cuts the purse to 100 Cr, so you draft on judgement instead of lookup. Franchise XI narrows the board to a single club and asks whether its whole history can produce eleven players good enough. The Daily Challenge gives every player on earth the same board, the same prices and the same purse, resets at midnight IST, and is the one mode that asks you to sign in — so a day’s attempt counts once, for everyone.
The draft rules are short in every mode: eleven players, at least one wicketkeeper, no more than four overseas, one season per cricketer, all of it inside the purse. The purse is the real opponent.
How it stays current
Seasons are added to the book as they finish, so the draft board grows with the sport rather than freezing at a snapshot. The public record also gets revised, and hand-rating two decades of cricket means some calls will be wrong. Corrections are welcome and they get made — the fastest route is the feedback form. Naming the player, the season and what looks off makes a fix far quicker to verify.
What Play 16-0 is not
It is not a real-money game. There is no wagering, no entry fee, no prize, and no payout of any kind — the leaderboard is the whole reward. It is not a fantasy app tied to live fixtures; every match here is simulated from historical data, and the same XI always plays out the same season so a result is something you can defend rather than re-roll.
It is also independent and fan-made. Play 16-0 is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any league, franchise, player or broadcaster. Player names and historical statistics are facts from the public record, used to identify real-world performances. The full terms are on the terms page.
Contact
play16zero@gmail.comCorrections, questions, privacy requests, or press — this inbox reaches Rohit directly. There is also a dedicated contact page, a feedback form, and our privacy policy.