Anybody know any decent cricket video games?

Ok I admit it. I’m thirty five years old and I still play computer games. It’s tragic. Sometimes I’m amazed that I actually found a girl willing to marry me – although I probably need to stop playing Football Manager and give her more attention if I want her to hang around.

My impressive library of games is littered with sporting titles: Tiger Woods golf, Madden NFL, the FIFA football titles, EA Sports Rugby. However, the one thing I lack is a decent cricket game. I’ve tried them all, believe me, but they’re all crap.

I took the last one I bought back to the shop. The one before that I ceremonially burned after Xavier Doherty bowled out my All Time England XI for 26.

I won’t mention the titles of the cricket simulations I’ve played over the years (many of you will know the ones I mean) but they’re all about as realistic as the acting in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. And they’re all as annoying as Jar Jar Binks.

The problems are three fold. Firstly, the games are either far too easy, or far too hard. Scoring 863-2 declared off 50 overs at the SCG gives you pleasure to begin with, but where’s the challenge? Hitting Shane Watson for 36 an over gets tiresome after a while.

Meanwhile, the titles that are too hard are simply demoralising and exasperating. I remember one occasion when I lost to the West Indies by an innings and 500 runs. Those kinds of margins might have been realistic in the 1980s, when the West Indies had Marshall / Garner and we had Tavare / Barnett, but the idea of Darren Sammy taking a 10-for at Lords is simply ridiculous.

The second issue is the painfully small budgets these games attract. They just seem cheap – and about as well planned as England’s winter schedule. The Madden NFL series is a huge seller in the United States, so the graphics and gameplay are usually spot-on. The cricketing equivalents appear to be cobbled together in five minutes.

The obvious point, I suppose, is this: why should software companies bother investing more time and effort? Cricket games usually sell a few copies in England, and a few more down under, but they’re hardly going to be money spinners. Until every household in India has a PlayStation3, cricket games are doomed to remain rubbish.

The third problem is the uniqueness of cricket as a sport – and the complex unnatural bodily contortions the game requires. How does one re-create the bowling actions of Lasith Malinga, Shaun Tait or Murali? And it is really possible for a computer sprite to bat with the grace of Jayawardene or Tendulkar? I have my doubts.

I remember one cricket game in particular that tried to recreate the bowling action of the quirky South African spinner Paul Adams. Frog in a blender? It looked more like scorpion down the jumper. It was painful.

In my opinion, there has only ever been one decent cricket game: Test Match (the cricketing equivalent of Subbuteo). You bowled the ball, which resembled a silver ball bearing, by rolling it down a chute attached to the bowlers arm. The batsman was controlled by trigger mechanism, which enabled him to play one shot – the straight drive.

The field was a piece of green cloth (imaginative, eh!) with different rings. If you hit the ball into the nearest ring you got one run, if you hit it into the next ring you got two runs … and so on.

In reality, however, scoring was usually restricted to fours and sixes – all of which went directly past the bowlers’ arm. The plastic fielders were therefore largely bereft of purpose. Nobody needed a mid-wicket or square leg. The best tactic was to have eight long-offs and a single long-on (in case there was a slight inside edge).

Good old Test Match eh. It was rubbish but fun.

James Morgan

21 comments

  • No need for the ‘puter… Endless sad hours of ‘fun’ can still be yours courtesy of the original cricket game – Howzat! (as played at the back of the class when was I was at school back in the… er…. perhaps we’ll forget that bit!)

    We were nerdy/dedicated enough that we would play entire test series – painstakingly entering all the details in a score book with our coloured pens (whatever happened to those pens that could do four different colours and were about an inch across?).

    Amazed to see that you can still buy Howzat! on Amazon.

  • It is one of lifes tragedies that no one has yet taken the FM engine and turned it into a cricket management sim. I’m am convinced days of pleasure could be had turning (say) Surrey into a team which doesn’t collapse at every opportunity, bidding at the IPL auctions and (as Kent) selling Fat Rob Key to just about anybody.

  • What happened to Maxie’s comment?!

    Have the TFT Gestapo now secured the right to censor the editor’s comments (they have long been deleting those of ordinary workers).

    • Too right! I reserve the right to delete any comment I disagree with, or find offensive or irrelevant. I also reserve the right to delete posts simply to annoy people, satisfy my lust for power, or, as is in this case, to delete the posts of people I don’t like very much (just kidding Maxie!)

  • I think the comment was superfluous as James had covered it in the main piece – I was a bit too quick off the mark!

  • Cricket Coach 2011 is a basic game for the PC but a bit of fun. International Cricket 2010 for the PS3 is nearly a very good game with some frustrating elements to it.

  • I used to play Subbuteo Cricket for hours on end, always with score book ready to be completed.

    If it was a Test Match in Australia, I would often get up early and play under “floodlights” usually a lamp.

    I do very occasionally play rugby computer games (my wife plays computer games too so that’s allowed) but I can’t find a decent cricket game either

  • I remember playing Test Match. Classic game.

    If you’re looking at video games, the best one I’ve ever played is Brian Lara Cricket ’99 for the PC. It had simple gameplay (only keyboard needed) but was very in-depth in terms of what you could do on the field. You could play anything from a simple 5-over slogathon to a full 5-match test series.

    Nowadays, you can get patches for it which will update all teams/players/kits.

    Definitely worth a (DLF Maximum) shot.

  • International Cricket Captain 2011 is the best game going around. I think it’s excellent. Very realistic cricket management game, if lacking top graphics. I’ve bought every game of the series since 2003.

  • Ashes 2009 in my opinion is a top quality cricket game. It’s easy to pick up and play, but the better you get at it the more there is to enjoy. It can be very tactical and setting yourself game plans and targets to achieve is very satisfying when it works.

    The only downside is that if you’re playing people online there’s a tendancy for a lag as the bowler delivers it, especially if you’re playing against someone from Australia or New Zealand. The newer version of the game, International Cricket 2010, addresses this brilliantly so only the bowler can see the lag. It’s far more destructive for the batsmanif one second the ball is in the bowlers hand and the next its on his stumps. However International Cricket 2010, is far to easy, a lot of the tactical skill you can employ in Ashes 2009 is lost because you anyone can pick up a controller and bowl someone out for under 50.

    What I like about Ashes 2009 is that when you learn how to play it, it can be a really in depth game. Playing someone who slogs it everytime, I set a tight field as I’m likely to get catches. But you have to adapt your game to suit your oppenents style.

    I guess a criticism would be that tests matches never last 5 days, which to be honest is the end of the world. Even if it only lasts 2, your likely to get accurate scores which makes it a fun game to play with my other cricket obssessed mates.

    A favourite memory of this game was me and mate being off work and playing a test match all day whilst listening to TMS during England’s tour of South Africa last year.

  • EA Sport’s Cricket 2003 ain’t bad at all. what i really like about it is, if, in a test match, you leave around 180-200 runs for a team to chase, the team which collapsed at around 30 in the first innings suddenly becomes a top class fighting unit, and you can have all kinds of weird dismissals, like a batsman being hit by a bouncer he was trying to hook, which in falls into the wicket and gets him out.

    Also, there’s autoplay, so if you are really good at batting and bowling at level 5, let them score decent runs through autoplay (500 ish ), and then chase. that’s fun. but the teams are frozen to the 03 world cup. i hate that.

  • Test Match cricket is excellent, recently got it out of the loft for my seven year old to play, it is excellent. The pitch has disintergrated but that is nothing some felt and tailors chalk can’t fix.

    My son is 7, rememeber, so I declated on 53/2 when playing him the first time. He knocked them off in no time for the loss of no wickets so I don’t go easy on him anymore!!!

  • When I was a young cricket nut, I devised a game, based on Howzat, You needed a cheap box of Bingo numbers and against each number (90)put a run value or a wicket.
    I kept a scorebook and away I went. Made a scoreboard out of stout cardboard and made the rollers (numbers) out of a linen material so they would endure me keep pulling them round. I often think these days you could have from 1 to 1000 runs, outs, and changes in conditions (Bring on Swan). You would of course need a random number machine selecting the numbers.

  • cricket is the only that can easily beat fifa.it has variations to everything.so unless proper bowling actions,shot variations in all directions,real faces,duckworth lewis system and all details are not done,a cricket game is useless.so till now there has been no proper game & it would be foolish to expect that for the next 5 years.

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