The world of cricket games is neither as popular nor as streamlined as that of Football and basketball. Yet we have had big publishers (Codemasters, EA Sports) who have worked on them. Amongst the cricket games a distinct spot is held by the Cricket Captain series.

My introduction to the series took place in early 2000s, funnily enough there was nothing special about it in my eyes. I wanted a game where I could feel like a batsman and a bowler. EA Cricket 2002 had quenched that desire quite well. I had really wanted a game similar to that or the Brian Lara series by Codemasters.

When I started out with International Cricket Captain 2000/2002, I soon realized that this wasn’t what I had? been expecting. There were no buttons for playing shots or delivering the ball. It was a management game where you take control of the team and play them through several seasons.

Immersion is an important aspect of video games. Fifa or Pro Evolution Soccer remain pretty highly demanded not only because you?? can play as your favourite side or player but also one can experience the mannerisms of a football game in the virtua?l world. The games are presented in the manner you watch them on television with right camera angles, optional celebrations and intense build-ups during key moments.

Returning back to cri?cket captain, what I felt to be an immersion breaking experience (because of lack of actual control over players or commentary by Benaud or Boycott) later turned into one of my favourite video gaming experiences.

What made it click?

Scenario Development: Whether it involved a player or a team, one could develop several scenarios in their heads in this game. In ICC 2002, A loss in Ashes 2002 led me to work extra hard towards Ashes 2005, aping the real life formidable England 2005 line-up, building it up in a similar manner, such as giving Michael Vaughan the captaincy in 2003, ma??king Harmison, Jones and Hoggard my main atta??ck around 2004 (though I did get KP as soon as possible, making him play tests in 2002 itself). It worked, I won 1-0 in an attritional battle.

Similarly, for individual players one had to develop an approach. It was always better to start with Sehwag or Afridi at the ‘normal�meter in batting and eventually move up the ladder. Being over-aggressive during the death never seemed to do anything other than make one lose wickets, even if I got lucky once with Alec Stewart smashing six fours to score 24 off the last over and win a world cup ?encounter with Zimbabwe.

Time: Cricket games take a lot of time to finish. They tried to address this by reducing the number of overs to 5 or 10. However that still left the issue of Test matches as well as the fact that even ten over games took quite some time to complete. Also cricket like other sports comprises of seasons and it would ta??ke a lot of effort and time to get to the end of season. Cricket Captain being a management game had no such troubles. You could play ball by ball or over by over. All that was needed was to manage the batting lineup, instruct the batsmen and bowlers as? to their roles and set up the fields. In a few hours, you could finish an Ashes tour or World Cup campaign.

Involvement & Realism: With licensing becoming an issue for cricketing games, (Remember Gemphir and Dhenier guiding India f?or a world cup win in 2011?) the immersion aspect took a hit. Of course, there are mods to save us but it doesn’t feel right when commentators can only take only licensed names.

Cricket Captain in itself had no issues with naming, also commentary was quite limited so as to never address the players by name. But since you had a game which went season by season, you could see the records of your players change after you’re done with each season. I still remember how Scott Newman did well for my Surrey side in ICC 2002 and became an automatic selection to my England side once I was chosen to manage England after a good county season (Needless to say he was splendid in that season which Surrey won). At least made me understand why certain cricketers back players they have seen?? for a? long time and have faith in, For e.g. Joe Root backing Gary Balance.

Another aspect in older games was that they gave you the ‘Trump Cards�feel, where the photos of players were attached next to them when they arrived a??t the wicket or were assigned a bowl.

The Cricket Captain series continues to date but like anything else, your first experience is always a different tale. The popularity of the series was visible in those days on various fora, where players would develop their own stories (just as they did for Cricket Coach series) about campaigns won and battles lost. Of late there have been charges against the series for not changing enough (‘if you get one of them, you’ve played all�, especially in times when Football Manager has kept itself more than relevant. (A perusal of steam ratings for the two might help)
Let us hope Cricket Captain and games of its ilk (i.e. whatever Oli Norwell is planning on next) keep c??hurning out games which stay relevant to the age and able to create modern day cricket battles on our desktops.

The effect of this on CricketWeb is that the following functions of the site will no lo??nger work and will be decommissioned when this occurs:

• Forum Arcade
• CW Cricket
• CW Cricket Quiz
• CW Cricket Hangman
• CW Cricket Memory
• CW Cricket Crosswords

This marks a sad end to the CW Cricket software that had a project team of 18 people across CricketWeb and our frien?ds at PlanetCricket and was over a year in the making. CW Cricket has had 1,967,415 games played to date sinc??e its launch in 2009 and many tens of thousands of the other games played also.

Enjoy these games while you still can and help CW Cricket go out with over 2 million games played! 

Get your team in!

You can read more about the competitions and join them here

MODIFICATIONS (MODS)

Unlike two-team series, managing your mods, which let you change players and captains, is crucial in tournament Fantasy Cricket. You can only set your team once per match day, regardless of the number of matche?s that day, based on *local time* for the tournament location. Use local fixture lists to determine this, not our Fantasy Cricket dates, since ours are based on GMT, so two matches on the same day may show up as on different days on our list.

To best use your mods, first see how many “match days” there are: count up how many different days will have matches, regardless of the number of matches per day. Subtract one from this number (because the first day’s match(es) don’t cost any mods), then divide the resulting number into the total number of mods allowed. That tells you the average number of mods you can use per match day.

You don’t want to run out of mods early (which means you’ve chosen more players early, and so not the best ones available the whole tournament) nor do you want to have any mods left over at the end, as near as possible (which means you could have had more players). On the other hand, don’t use the same number of mods slavishly every match day: use more when there are better players to pick, less when there are not.

Choosing captains is another cricital use of mods. In all three WC competitions, changing a captain costs 3 mods, so each time you do that you’re losing 3 additional players you could have added. This is often well worth it, because a top player can easily score more fantasy points in a match than 3 middling players. But save your captain slots for the best players, and just hold them over till their next match instead of switching to a weaker captain.

This holds true in a similar way for all player changes: whenever you put a new player in for a new match day, in general replace the players that won’t play again for the most days. That way, the players you don’t change will play again sooner. Each time you reset your team for a new match day, be sure to look ahead at least a couple of match days to see which teams will be playing!

WHEN TO SET YOUR TEAM

Ideally you want to set your team each match day after the toss so you can know who will actually be the playing XIs. However, when there are two matches in the WC the second match will always be later, so there is no way to know who will be playing in that match when you have to set. Read the previews, check all the news you can find, and remember that everyone else will be in the same boat. And if you’re going to be busy (or sleeping!) at the time of the toss, it’s lots better to set early than to not set at all. In general, if a player is questionable for a match you can’t wait for the toss of, e.g., because of a niggle, avoid that player unless you think he or she is going to make a big difference if they play.

WHERE TO SELECT PLAYERS

In the recently introduced player categories of our Fantasy Cricket (Bastmen, WK, Bowlers, and Mixed), you will benefit by choosing carefully whom you put in the Mixed slots as opposed to the restricted slots. When it’s time to replace players, which you’ll need to do every new match day, you have a lot more flexibility changing mixed players than resticted players. This will affect not only being able to choose the set of players you want, but also being able to make adjustments if the set of players you want costs too much and you have to manipulate your team to fit within the budget. Put players in the restricted positions who you think are less likely to need to be changed.

This becomes especially important when teams play that have many expensive players. There may be times when it’s actually necessary to select a player you know will not play because they have a low cost (E or F, for example), so you can get all the other players you want most. Don’t be afraid to do that, if it gives you the best team you can select. Only a few players will be outstanding in any match–give yourself the best chance to have them on your team.

HOW TO HAVE THE MOST FUN

The ultimate reason to play fantasy cricket is to have fun. And winning is probably the most fun of all. However, we can’t all win every tournament, we can’t always be in the top tier every time. You’ll have good tournaments and bad ones, that happens to all of us. But one way you can have more fun even if you’re not among the top teams in any given competition is to play with your family and friends who love cricket too. Create a “user competiton” (just click on “User comp. – create” on the right side of the home FC page) and have your family and friends join it. That way you can always see exactly where you stand compared to each other in the competition. There’s lots of material for bragging rights and trash talk as you all participate in the fantasy cricket competition!

We are bringing to you the Men’s and Women’s World Cups with some great prizes too! The Men’s Qualifying Competition starts on 8th March and finishes on 13th March with the Main Competition getting underway on 15th March with the Final on 3rd April. The Women’s starts on 15th March with the Final on 3rd April.

World Cup T20 2016 – Prizes

1st Place (FC) – USD$100 Amazon.com Gift Voucher
2nd Place (FC) – USD$50 Amazon.com Gift Voucher
3rd Place (FC) – USD$30 Amazon.com Gift Voucher

Womens World Cup T20 2016 – Prizes

1st Place (FC) – A copy of Skirting the Boundary: A History of Women’s Cricket

For those of you that are new to the Fantasy Cricket concept, we would suggest you have a read through our Game Guide whi?ch explains everything to you. Remember once you create a team, you can even create your own mini competition exclusive to friends and family!

Once you are ready to go, head on in and Register and don’t forget it costs you absolutely nothing! If you have registered in the past for Cricket Web Fantasy Cricket or Cricket Web CW Games, you can login to your account through the Fantasy Cricket frontpage.

Specific Details about the Competitions

World Cup T20 2016 – Qualifying

* Free no c??os??t modifications until the first match starts.

* 50 modifications once the competition starts

* A captaincy change will cost 3 modifications. As explained on the Game Guide page, your captain earns you double points, but you also lose double? points.

* Details on how you score points can be found on the Points Summary page.

World Cup T20 2016 & Womens World Cup T20 2016

Note: Player Rankings for Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka will be updated ?at the conclusion of the Asia Cup. Player Rankings will also be updated at the conclusion of the New Zealand/Australia/South Africa/West Indies? Women Series.

* Free no cost modifications until the first m??atch starts.

* 100 modifications once the competition starts

* A captaincy change will cost 1 modification. As explained on the Game Guide page, your captain earns you ?double points, but you also lose ??double points.

* Details on how you score points can be found on the Points Summary page.

If you have any questions please feel free to lodge a support ticket.

I’ve been using Cricket Captain since 2001, when I was six years old. The 2001 Ashes Edition was a source of great joy to me throughout my childhood, as I led Australia and a variety of English county teams to a wide range of successful and failed outcomes. The last version of the game I purchased was International Cricket Captain 2010 on the iPhone, and after reviewing ICC 2012 I still continued to primarily use the previous edition. Cricket Captain 2014 has changed that.

I will be honest here, I don’t like the graphical updates in the slightest. I feel the menu designs are over-the-top and make the game window look far too busy; part of the success of similar sports management games is, in my opinion, related to the minimalistic and functional design. In short, ICC is not a game you purchase for the graphics. It’s primary assets are its engine and its database. At the risk of sounding like a pedant, admittedly in a review for a game appealing most strongly to statistical pedants, the display of batting averages to only one decimal point is a source of great frustration. Given the size of the margins on either side of the window, I find it hard to imagine that the designers couldn’t find the handful of pixels to continue to display averages to the second decimal point.

Similarly, there are a handful of functional concerns arising from the complete redesign – the inability to use the scroll wheel (or, in my case, trackpad) within selection screens makes finding the player you want somewhat tedious, while the removal of hovering over a batsman’s name in-game to see his batting preferences adds extra time when it comes to designing tactics to counter him. In positive news, however, the ability to take over teams in only one form of the game at County level is a very nice touch; if you hate T20, you can focus exclusively on the side’s four day campaign or vice versa.

However, the tweaks to the First Class engine have massively improved playability and realism, at least in my experiences. There’s a far larger emphasis on building an innings, with more batsmen willing to play themselves in slowly and accelerate as the innings progresses, rather than the far more linear aggression I’d seen in previous versions. Sometimes this can result in players batting too defensively – I’ve had more half-centuries scored at a strike rate in the 30s than ever before – but generally speaking the rebalancing of aggression has worked nicely.

It has resulted in a game that feels more bat-centric than the past, a change which was long overdue. Bowlers – especially subcontinental spinners – were a recurring, dominant feature of previous versions of ICC, with far too many averaging around the 22 mark in FC cricket, 18 in List A, and down around the 10 runs per wicket in T20 cricket. Meanwhile, having a batsman average above 45 was a remarkable achievement. Has the shift gone too far the other way? Perhaps, but how much of that is the engine, and how much is the incompetence of the man changing the bowlers is hard to distinguish.

The T20 engine is still imperfect, however, throwing up some very strange and often unrealistic examples of cricket. For example, in one English County game Jade Dernbach took 6/6 – a thoroughly unrealistic occurrence indeed – meanwhile, during a season playing as the Rajasthan Royals (or should I say, simulating said season), Shane Watson took 7/18 from his 4 overs. Moreover, in that very IPL season, despite playing only two matches myself (which were both summarily lost by large margins), the Royals took out the IPL title. I’m unsure whether this is a flaw in the engine or a reward for my stunningly good selection policies, but it was unexpected all the same.

Meanwhile, throughout a T20 season with Surrey, using similar tactics throughout proved somewhat successful – similar bowling plans with specific death bowlers, similar batting line-ups to structure chases, similar failures from horrendously out-of-form overseas batsmen (screw you, Messrs Smith and Dilshan). However, in a case of the game reflecting the realities of County Cricket, the occasional game would result in a collapse of epic proportions, or the well-drilled bowling attack conceding 200+ out of nowhere. It’s frustrating to play, no doubt, as one does not want to spend their time and energy designing tactics and plans only for their side to be utterly destroyed, but the game is far better for it.

The AI’s choice of bowlers can, on occasion, be questionable; in an ATG T20 in which I pitted my all-rounder heavy Australian side against a South African side with 7 genuine bowling options, the Proteas opted against utilising either the talents of Clive Rice or Vintcent van de Bijl, leaving the latter a specialist fieldsman and a wasted spot in the XI. While obviously teams should use their best bowlers, when one concedes over 50 from 4 overs and another is also the opening batsman, one would think the AI would be able to select bowlers in a slightly more detailed way than allocating 4 overs each to the best 5 bowlers irrespective of their actual performance. Any captain who refused to bowl van de Bijl or Rice as the others conceded upwards of 200 would rightly be criticised.

Contracting remains relatively similar to the past, though the values of players seem to be somewhat more intelligent than in previous editions (fringe all-rounders remain suspiciously overpriced, however). The addition of an Offers tab to track who you’re in negotiations with is nice, especially when you want to contract more players than are allowed in any given round, however moving forward a Football Manager-style option to manually type in offers, rather than endlessly clicking arrows, would be a lovely addition.

Finally, the game has crashed on me on a couple of occasions, seemingly at random. While my laptop is admittedly overworked and understrength as well as ageing, that doesn’t completely absolve the game from its stability issues. I do believe, however, that a patch addressing these issues has been released after I began this review, so Childish Things is obviously on the ball here. 8th Nov 2014 – since this review has been published, Childish Things have released a patch addressing the stability issues

All of this leaves me with the conclusion that the positives of ICC 2014 far outweigh any drawbacks. The updates and reworkings of match engines refresh the game significantly, better reflecting the realities of the modern era of cricket and increasing playability. The statistical database still remains the game’s focal point, providing all the information you could possibly want within a handful of clicks. As ever with simulation games, there are flaws, but all in all this year’s version of the successful Cricket Captain franchise is a worthwhile purchase.

Read more in our International Cricket Captain 2014 section.

Please keep in mind that the fixtures haven’t been fully finalized and only the matches being played in the UAE are shown at this stage.

For those of you that are new to the Fantasy Cricket concept, we would suggest you have a read through our Game Guide which explains everything to you.

Once you are ready to go, head on in and Register and don’t forget it costs you absolutely nothing! If you have registered in the past for Cricket Web Fantasy Cricket or Cricket Web CW Games, you can login to your account through the Fantasy Cricket frontpage.

If you have any questions or problems, please log a Helpdesk call. Please let us?? know if you notice any missing ?players from the selectable list so they can be added.

Specific Details of the Competition

* Free no cost modifications until 16th April.

* 200 modifi?cations allowed once the competition starts

* A captaincy change will cost two modifications. As explained on the Game Guide page, your captain earns you double points, but yo??u also lose double points.

* Details on how you score points can be found on the Points Summary page.

Various screenshots, a fully playable two day trial and a feature list is available through our Cricket Coach 2014 section.

HES and Big Ant Studios are working under license with the Bradman Foundation located in Bowral. “It is indeed an honour to be able to bring the greatest player to a technology savvy generation of fans in what promises to be the greatest cricket game of all time.” said Sebastian Giompaolo, Managing Director for HES, “Big Ant Studios have been working hard on this title for four years and we at HES are really excited with what they have been able to achieve. It is far superior to any cricket game in the market.”

Don Bradman Cricket 14 includes:

* Career Mode?, allowing you to take contr??ol of an aspiring young cricketer and take him through the ranks to International glory.

* Unique Batting an???d Bowling Controls, giving full 360 Shot control and Line and Length delivery without pitch markers.

* A fully featured fielding system that allows you to run down the ball a?nd slide to prevent a Four, catch a high ball ??on the boundary rope, or knock down the stumps to take a vital run out. You are always involved in the play at every stage of the game!

* Ball Physics giving realistic Edges, bat? pad catches and movement off the pitch.

* A complete player physics system with individual attributes including weight and height – imagine running in a 2 metre bowler to delivery that perfect bouncer!

* Appeal and Electro??nic R??eview system allowing for the first time challenges of the umpires decision.

* Practice Nets, Hone your skills to perfe??ction before taking to the field.

* Dynamic time of day, Weather System and Pitch Degradation that are based on real world data with effects occurring in real-time throughout a days’ play.

* The Cricket Academy, allowing for unparalleled customisation of your Cricket experien?ce, creating Teams, players, Tours, Competitions, Match Types?? and even Umpires.

* More than 4000 Community created Players a??nd teams re?ady to download and use in game.

* An online Save system that lets you continue you??r match whenever you wan?t with online opponents.

Don Bradman Cricket 14 “The legend continues.”