Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket/Team templates

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[edit] New First-class, List A and Domestic Twenty20 templates

(Accidentally originally posted on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket/Team templates page itself) I have recently created a set of team templates designed for, and currently in use on, the 2008 Indian Premier League page. These templates are located here: Template:Cr-IPL. I have largely copied the format from the existing templates for Australian First-class teams: Template:Cr-Aus. For each the teams in the IPL, there are 5 templates, which I will demonatsrate here:

  • {{Cr-IPL|kolk-h|L}} → (H) Kolkata Knight Riders (if Kolkata is the team batting first and the home team)
  • {{Cr-IPL|kolk|L}} → Kolkata Knight Riders (if Kolkata is the team batting first and the away team)
  • {{Cr-IPL|kolk-h|R}} → Kolkata Knight Riders (H) (if Kolkata is the team batting second and the home team)
  • {{Cr-IPL|kolk|R}} → Kolkata Knight Riders (if Kolkata is the team batting second and the away team)
  • {{Cr-IPL|kolk-r}} → Kolkata (to be used in the "result" field, if Kolkata wins the match)

Similar templates exist for other IPL teams and Australian First-class teams (except that for Australian teams, at the moment, the 4th form is also used in the "result" field). There are a few things to note about these IPL templates:

  • The templates are designed to be used so that, as is the case with the format for international matches, the first team listed in a score summary will be the team which bats first.
  • These domestic team templates, unlike the National team templates, will indicate with a "(H)" symbol which team is the home team. This is entirely appropriate (except in certain circumstances like if a tournament is held all at one ground) because, unlike International matches, domestic competitions are usually held on a "home and away" basis, where each team will play every other team both home and away. By contrast, most International matches and series are played entirely in one country, and consequently labelling a team as the "home team", especially when the wikipedia article explicity states that the matches take place in a particular country (see for example 2007-08 Commonwealth Bank Series), is unnecessary and maybe even bad form.
  • The "team colour icons" I have made for the IPL are rather crude (due to my lack of expertise in this area). It would be useful if someone was able to make a comprehensive template of icons for all First-class, List A and domestic Twenty20 teams around the world, similar to this template which has been created for the sport of rugby league: Template:Leagueicon.

I have one final point about the current national team templates. I notice that for the "Cr" templates (Template:Cr), there is an option to specify a historical national flag rather than the current flag, such as here:

This is an extremely good idea, but I believe it may contain a flaw. It seems to assume that a country's current flag will remain its flag forever. However, if (for example) South Africa's flag was to change again in a few years time, then all pages which hadn't inserted the optional parameter would then start displaying the new South African flag, rather than the 2008 flag which they should display. As such, my suggestion is to make the variant or "date" parameter mandatory to fill in, to avoid this problem occurring in the future. I intend to add the IPL and Australian First-class templates to this page in the near future. Juwe (talk) 05:17, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I should note that this "superceded flag" problem is equally applicable to the domestic team templates and their "team colour icons".
Juwe (talk) 05:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I have posted about this problem on the "Wikiproject Flag Template" talk page.
Juwe (talk) 03:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)