It's just not cricket - why no great cricket computer games?

As much as I’m enjoying the latest version of Pro Evolution Soccer at the moment – and believe me as an Arsenal fans it’s about the only way I’m getting pleasure from football at the moment, playing last night brought me back to wondering about an old personal chestnut. Why have there never been any cricket computer games to match up?

Now pro-Evo stands alone for me – and for all right thinking football connoisseurs head and shoulders above all other sports game ‘franchises’ but surely the powers at be at EA Sports, or Konomi could have come up with something better than the efforts so far.

The issue goes way back, I can clearly remember trying so hard to LOVE Graham Gooch’s Cricket (or whatever it was called) perched on a stool in my best friend Oliver’s bedroom back in the early nineties, without it ever quite delivering. Since then I’ve enthusiastically tried to embrace all manner of cricket games from various edition’s of Brian Lara, through to EA Cricket – throwing myself into them with relish – but deep down never really being satisfied with the end product.

Maybe the stop-start format of cricket just doesn’t quite transfer as well to a computer game as the more free-flowing, expressive football for example. But you know what, I don’t buy it – no game on earth is as slow or as staid as golf, but EA Sport’s Tiger Woods golf is a phenomenal game.

All the games seem to have had just a little flaw – simply too hard, too easy, not enough attention to detail. For me EA Sports got the closest, as a bit of a cricket geek, it even allowed you to get lost in the intricacies of the county championship batting averages – who amongst us hasn’t dreamed of pushing Jason Gallian’s season’s average up over 50? Oh, just me then… but the playability just wasn’t quite there – if I remember correctly it was rushed out just that little bit too quickly to take advantage of the 05 Ashes surge in cricketing interest. I must admit I’ve never given Cricket Management games a bash, I don’t really see with the lack of a proper transfer window how they’ll be able to compare to Championship Manager though.

Mostly the problem lies in that old word with cricket – patience. It’s great fun bashing the ball around for fours and sixes, but bowling is the real problem, typically the CPU is set up to bat ‘properly’ leaving balls outside the off stump, defending good length deliveries and waiting for the bad ball to attack. It takes a certain special kind of someone to enjoy bowling 90 overs of deliveries in the corridor of uncertainty waiting for Justin Langer to nick one.

Some of the best games are the simplest, I remember pretty a pretty compelling game on the BBC website, and this one’s worth a go http://www.foddy.net/Cricket.html – although I struggled to get a hang of it. But the best at the moment is the now legendary Stick Cricket www.stickcricket.com – the destroyer of many a lunchtime. Easy enough to play straight away, but with enough depth and enough challenges to keep you interested for weeks on end…. And with all the crash bang wallop of a Twenty20 cup final.

With the growing popularity of cricket, especially Twenty20 there must be the commercial opportunity for a really well produced game – I’m sure the IPL would accommodate any money making opportunity. Or what about the ultimate – can you see a game of Wii cricket taking place in your living room. Come on guys, make it happen.