Tag: Women’s Cricket

In previous versions of Cricket Captain, I’ve flirted a little with Career Mode at domestic level but on the 2018 version, I’ve focused exclusively on my England Career (International Only). I think it’s relevant that I point that out and that the following suggestions are based on my experiences of playing the game in that way…

County Championship Averages Separated by Division.

Having this as a filter option would be a really useful tool when selecting the England team. Obviously runs and wickets etc scored in division one are a better indication of a player’s ability to adjust to Test cricket than contributions made in division two. The same split could be applied where appropriate in the domestic competitions of other countries as well, for example: I think that Sri Lanka has three tiers in First Class cricket.

Women’s Cricket

Even if it would be too much to ask for a full Women’s career mode to be implemented, surely World Cups and Custom Series could be playable options. All that is required are the names of women and maybe some long hair where appropriate. Career records are of course a pre-requisite.

Player Editor

In the early versions of the game, you could at least change a player’s name, I think that the players even had pen pics. It would be great if you could create a player from scratch,  choose their name, age, batting/bowling hand/style, nationality, ethnicity, at the very least their hair colour/style and maybe even which team they begin their career with. You could then for example play an England career, make yourself captain and follow your performances as you soar the run/wicket charts as the years go by. If you could edit as many as twenty players then you could even make up your entire national side out of friends and family.

Stop Early Retirements

I appreciate that early retirements happen (e.g. Fabian Cowdrey) but Delray Rawlins has disappeared from the last two versions of the game aged about 21. In the previous version he did this despite the fact that he had been capped in ODIs. What’s additionally weird about this is that in my current game, there are players that are as old as 36 who have never even played a domestic game but they can still be selected for England!

Squad Injury Replacements

If a player gets injured on tour, it’d be great if you could be provided the option to call-up a replacement. It’d also be good if even when playing at home, occasionally a player might get injured on the morning of a match, so in a Test match for example, your options would drop from thirteen to twelve.

A-Teams

Tying into the injury replacement, it would be hugely beneficial to have A-Teams/England Lions squads in the game. You could have three options:

1. Select and play
2. Select and simulate
3. Auto select and simulate

This would be hugely beneficial during winter tours when it can be difficult to get the best out of players that are out of form.

More Tour Matches

The tour match feature is half-baked, it’s an unreal element of a game that’s good because it seems real! It would be really helpful for the same reason as mentioned previously. When players are out of form on winter tours you need some way to get them back into form. Currently some tours have warm-up matches and some don’t. If gamers don’t want to play them they can simulate them or, similar to my A-Team suggestion, it could be an option at the start of a career to either have them in your game or not.

Breakdown of Dismissals

Let’s say that my best bowler has taken 500 Test wickets. I’d like to know how many were  bowled, how many were LBW, how many were stumped etc. Also, it’d be great to know how many left to right handers have been dismissed by the bowler. This information could be presented in pie chart form similar to some of the graphics already in the game. Similar stats would be welcome for batsmen too. How many times have they been dismissed caught etc, how many times have they been dismissed by a left-arm bowler or by a spin bowler. This information could be used when selecting a team.

Cap Number

In each player’s personal section, it could list which cap number the player is in each format. In Player Records it would be great if you could arrange each match Type (Test/ODI/T20I) by cap number.

Jack Leach to be Bald!

As it says on the tin, Jack Leach to be bald.

Captaincy Record

It’d be great for a record to be kept of how many matches you’ve played in each format and how many you’ve won and lost. If this was also recorded for each player in the game as well as the gamer then that’d be great. What I mean by that is that there’s an overall record for me playing the game but if for example I’ve had Max Holden and Sam Hain both captain my Test side, I can see their individual captaincy records by format.

Medium Difficulty Level

Currently, the only difficulty levels are Easy and Normal. I’ll be honest, I don’t exactly dominate at Easy level and based on previous experience the less said about hard the better. Having three difficulty levels: Easy, Normal and Hard could really help some gamers stick with the game.

Have you played Cricket Captain recently or in seasons past? Do you have any viable suggestions to enhance the game without compromising its core qualities?