Cricket is possibly the hardest sport for newcomers to get to grips with.
Games lasting five days at a time, confusing phrases such as ‘leg-side’ that actually switch sides depending on the batsmen, Geoffrey Boycott - it’s enough to make a sports fan sigh in resignation and return to watching thugs kick a ball around.
Jump Games’s series of cricket titles has provided a refreshingly simple take on the gentleman’s game for some time now, offering up many tutorials and hints for newcomers along with positioning and shot-selection for those more in-the-know about reverse sweeps and so on.
ICC World Cup 2011 does little to innovate in this regard, offering up more of the same high quality cricket we’d expect from the team.
Hitting it for four fours
As the title suggests, this latest entry concerns the Cricket World Cup taking place in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh at the time of writing.
The official ICC license is emblazoned on the game, meaning that every player name and squad is true to the current teams on the field, along with relatively accurate stats for each player and all the correct team colours.
Presentation-wise, World Cup Cricket 2011 looks extremely similar to (as in, it’s basically the same as) Ashes Cricket.
Considering that game was one of the best-looking cricket games on mobile - complete with smooth animations and fun cut-aways to the umpire and video screen - we’ll let that point rattle past for a no ball.
Time for tea
Along with up to 50 overs per innings one day play, complete with the real fixtures for this year’s tournament, World Cup 2011 also includes a series of challenges, which task the player with taking up the reins of one of the 14 international teams chasing/preventing a target score.
These are quick and fun bursts of action for those who don’t have time to sit through a whole match, even if they are a little on the easy side.
Everything can be made harder, of course, if you decide you’re good enough to use manual batting.
In this mode, every ball requires a decent understanding of where to place your batsmen, where the ball is likely to skim off the surface, and what shot is required to pierce through cover towards the boundary.
Thankfully, even those not au fait with cricket technique are encouraged to switch to this mode, thanks to a series of helpful tips after every ball that focus on timing, position, and shot selection.
Reverse sweep
All of which was true to some degree with Ashes Cricket of course, which makes recommending World Cup 2011 to players of that earlier title a little harder to do.
It’s a shame also that there’s no way of selecting difficulty levels or randomising the World Cup groupings by mixing up the associate teams - two features that would have added a bit more longevity to the game.
However, there’s still plenty here for cricket fans of all nations to savour, even if the English and Australians may be left feeling a little ‘urn’-der whelmed (sorry).
Games lasting five days at a time, confusing phrases such as ‘leg-side’ that actually switch sides depending on the batsmen, Geoffrey Boycott - it’s enough to make a sports fan sigh in resignation and return to watching thugs kick a ball around.
Jump Games’s series of cricket titles has provided a refreshingly simple take on the gentleman’s game for some time now, offering up many tutorials and hints for newcomers along with positioning and shot-selection for those more in-the-know about reverse sweeps and so on.
ICC World Cup 2011 does little to innovate in this regard, offering up more of the same high quality cricket we’d expect from the team.
Hitting it for four fours
As the title suggests, this latest entry concerns the Cricket World Cup taking place in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh at the time of writing.
The official ICC license is emblazoned on the game, meaning that every player name and squad is true to the current teams on the field, along with relatively accurate stats for each player and all the correct team colours.
Presentation-wise, World Cup Cricket 2011 looks extremely similar to (as in, it’s basically the same as) Ashes Cricket.
Considering that game was one of the best-looking cricket games on mobile - complete with smooth animations and fun cut-aways to the umpire and video screen - we’ll let that point rattle past for a no ball.
Time for tea
Along with up to 50 overs per innings one day play, complete with the real fixtures for this year’s tournament, World Cup 2011 also includes a series of challenges, which task the player with taking up the reins of one of the 14 international teams chasing/preventing a target score.
These are quick and fun bursts of action for those who don’t have time to sit through a whole match, even if they are a little on the easy side.
Everything can be made harder, of course, if you decide you’re good enough to use manual batting.
In this mode, every ball requires a decent understanding of where to place your batsmen, where the ball is likely to skim off the surface, and what shot is required to pierce through cover towards the boundary.
Thankfully, even those not au fait with cricket technique are encouraged to switch to this mode, thanks to a series of helpful tips after every ball that focus on timing, position, and shot selection.
Reverse sweep
All of which was true to some degree with Ashes Cricket of course, which makes recommending World Cup 2011 to players of that earlier title a little harder to do.
It’s a shame also that there’s no way of selecting difficulty levels or randomising the World Cup groupings by mixing up the associate teams - two features that would have added a bit more longevity to the game.
However, there’s still plenty here for cricket fans of all nations to savour, even if the English and Australians may be left feeling a little ‘urn’-der whelmed (sorry).
