Pavilion — the cricket game

Real match chases · a world first

The real teams set it. You chase it.

When a real international side finishes batting first, that exact target goes live in Pavilion within minutes. As far as we know, no other game lets you chase the real target live.

1 · The real innings endsEvery T20I and ODI involving New Zealand, England, Australia, India, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and West Indies, men's and women's.
2 · The target goes liveThe real total plus one, off the real overs, with who batted first and what they made.
3 · Chase it in the breakBat while the real teams change over, or any time in the next 48 hours. Match nights play harder than free play: it's a real chase.
4 · Fewest balls winsEvery successful chase goes on the board. Test matches get their own longer chase, open for the whole match.

Read how the first one went: India set 224 against West Indies, and we chased it live from home.

How it plays

One ball at a time, and nothing to learn

Thirty balls. Five batters. A fence to clear. There is no manual and no menu to work out — you watch the ball come down and you decide when to swing. Everything else in Pavilion is built on that one moment.

A batter at the crease facing the bowler. The scoreboard reads Pavilion 11 for 2, four point one overs, needing 13 off 25. — **At the crease.** The scoreboard tells you everything — the score, the over, and exactly what you need.

The bowler running in, the ball on its way down the pitch. — **Seven bowlers.** Slow, medium, express pace, swing both ways, off spin and leg spin — each with its own timing.

A six sailing over the boundary towards the pavilion. — **Clear the fence.** Time it properly and it goes over the rope, the trees and the pavilion roof.

The moment a fallen batter returns to the crease after a six. — **The RELOAD.** Lose a wicket and you can get them back — one six brings a fallen batter in. Nobody is ever quite out of a game.

The season screen showing Book One, Village Green, and its list of fixtures. — **A season of fixtures.** Books of matches, each teaching a different thing — survive an innings, chase a total, clear cow corner.

The result card at the end of a won match, showing each batter's score. — **A proper scorecard.** Every innings ends with a real card — who batted, what they made, how they went.

The record

Most games forget. This one doesn't.

In most games a score lasts until somebody beats it, and the list wipes when the season ends.

Pavilion keeps an honours board instead. Make a hundred and your name goes on the wall with the year beside it — numbered, permanent, and never pushed off by anybody else's innings. The wall always takes one more name.

It is the oldest idea in cricket, and it is the reason a player comes back: not to defend a position, but because the thing they did is still there.

Everyone also gets a debut number on their first innings — free, sequential, and nobody can take it off you. You are the Nth person ever to bat at Pavilion.

The Hundred Club

Awaiting the first hundred

For coaches and clubs

Pavilion started on grass, and it still works there

Before it was a video game it was a training-ground game, invented by a coach in North Yorkshire to end a junior session. It needs two sets of stumps, some cones and nothing else.

The full rules are here, free for any club to run — or take the printable sheet straight to the ground.

2 pages
A4 PDF

The rules, on two printable pages

A pitch diagram, the whole game at a glance, and the reload explained — made to be printed, put in a kit bag, and passed to the next coach. Free to copy and share.

Download

Questions

The things people ask first

Is it free?

Yes — every fixture, every board, multiplayer, all of it. A few optional extras cost Robux, described below.

What age is it for?

Anyone who wants to play. The game carries Roblox's 9+ label. Right now Roblox shows every newly published experience only to age-checked 16+ players until it passes Roblox's review for younger accounts, which needs 250 highly engaged players. Until then, younger players cannot find it. That is a platform rule, not a setting.

Do I need to know cricket to play?

No. The early fixtures teach you one idea at a time, starting with nothing but watching the ball and timing the shot. Knowing cricket helps — but a lot of this was built so it wouldn't have to.

What can you buy?

Two things, both optional. A one-off life membership of the Pavilion Cricket Club, which puts your name and a number on the members' board and gives you a cap at the crease. And rain cards, which let you move past a fixture you are stuck on, with no star and no place on an honours board. Rain cards can also be earned by playing. Nothing for sale improves your batting. The full list.

Can my child talk to strangers in it?

Chat is Roblox's own, banded by verified age — under-13s have it off by default, and nine-to-fifteens get it gradually with safeguards. Pavilion adds nothing on top of it — no private channel, no voice, no direct messages of its own.

Can they play with a friend?

Yes. Make a room, tell your friend the four-letter word, and you both land on the same ground on opposite pitches — with the same bowling at each end, so it is a fair match.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes, and that is what most of it was designed and tested on. Tablet and desktop work too.

Who made it?

Pavilion — an independent studio in New Zealand. About.

Thirty balls. Five batters. A fence to clear.