Review: Cricket World

Note: the following review was originally posted by John as a comment to another post on this site. I have reposted it here for easier viewing.

Game Title: Cricket World

Publisher: Owzat Games

Mechanism: A quickplaying dice and chart game needing just a few readily accessable ratings and a scoresheet to start playing.

Description: I was one of the two main playtesters for Cricket World after Terry Goodchild had devised the game, and found it immensely playable, fun to play, doesn’t take too long to play an entire Test Match or Series, and gives very realistic results off the rating system used in the game.

It’s a quickplaying dice and chart game needing just a few readily accessable ratings and a scoresheet to start playing (the game comes with some ratings already) and you can play Test Matches or indeed any 3, 4 or 5 day matches with the game as purchased.

Ratings convert to how many cards are allocated to the Batting and Bowiling side (black and red suits of cards). It’s part of the Lambourne range of 4/5/6 games meaning action starts on one of those numbers coming up on a dice roll and the said deck of playing cards being used to see which action is started. It maybe the bowler’s card is read, or the batsman’s card and the higher the number rolled the more runs will be scored or the higher the out likelihood.

As the wickets fall the chances of lower order batsmen being out increases and the rate of scoring is likely to decrease for tail enders. Playing defensively, normal, or attacking also affects the likelihood of a batsman being out and the segment length of scoring the given runs, hence the scoring rate.

Runs are scored in segments of overs off the batting card, segments are of varying length subject to which card is activated. Weather and pitch effects come in to play as can special events and bowler types.

The game is a “layer” game, so layer one will give just team scores over the match and take under an hour to play a full 5 day test match. Adding layers 2 and 3 gives batsmens’ scores and then bowlers’ scores respectively, and level 4 adds the pitch and weather rules. A 5 day test at level 4 should be played in about and hour and a half when one is totally familiar with the rules. You may want to play a little slower to feel the flavour of what’s happening at every turn of the match.

The rules show you how to rate your own teams for any time or period to play any match you wish. Note it is TEAM ratings used based on the actual teams batting and bowling abilities, but the game system gives you the higher and lower order scores and bowling off that basic information and end results are very accurately represented.

For those who don’t have the time to play INTERNATIONAL CRICKET which is like ball by ball play, with individual player cards, this game gives you the “highlights” of the match and a much lower playing time (see review of International Cricket on this site by clicking here).

Give it a try – I think you will enjoy it if the above outline review appeals to you. I played a lot of this game in playtesting and still look forward to starting and playing each new match.

John