This review is sponsored by Wicket Cricket manager – click the link or head to the App Store and play today!
If you’ve been following The Roar’s Ashes coverage over the last month and a half, chances are you’ve noticed that I’ve covered every single day of this utterly bonkers and permanently compelling series, plus some other bits and bobs along the way.
Not many people have been mad enough to watch every single ball – and even the rain delays – from the first day at Edgbaston to the last at The Oval, and having volunteered to burn the 4am oil for the better part of the last 46 nights, I’m one of them.
The result is that as Stuart Broad nicked off Alex Carey to complete a 2-2 tied series and leave us waiting for 28 months until hostilities between England and Australia can resume at the Gabba in December 2025, I felt a mixture of two emotions: complete and utter exhaustion, and more than a tinge of sadness that my normal life will now need to resume after getting paid to watch one of the greatest, and certainly most dramatic, series in my lifetime.
In short, I found myself with an Ashes-sized hole in my life.
So when Manish Burman, the sole engineer behind Wicket Cricket Manager, the game you’ve likely seen and heard plenty about already if you’re a voracious consumer of cricket writing and video essays like me, approached The Roar looking to partner up for the end of the Ashes and beyond, it was always going to be me to put my hand up and see what all the fuss was about.
Spoiler alert: it’s waaaay more complex than I’d anticipated, and I also absolutely suck at it. For now – I’m nothing if not resilient.
The first thing that strikes you about the game is its detail – set yourself up with an Australian team and you can locate yourself everywhere from Melbourne to Queanbeyan; while there are eight different other countries all around the world to pick from.
Starting off with $500,000 to build my team – you can get a bank loan for more if you reach a certain level – I won the toss in my first match (take that, Pat Cummins), and was immediately hit by the spectacular detail once again.
Not only can you do all the obvious team selection things like pick your side and batting order, you even get to choose how attacking your batters can be.
Naturally, I channelled my inner Brendon McCullum and ramped both my openers up to 11. The first wicket fell when one of them was clean bowled off the second ball of the innings; the other hit his first two balls for six and four. Normal stuff.
Having made an impressive 6/154 off my 20 overs, the greater challenge came when it was my team’s turn to field; not only are you tasked with choosing your bowlers, but also setting your field – it even comes with an inner circle to make things properly professional.
This is where I hit the limits of my abilities as a cricket manager; my team, with shoddy leadership to blame (and a spinner who kept overstepping) was beaten with three balls to spare.
As I found out, the more your team loses, the harder it is to attract players to play for you and the more you have to pay up to secure their services. Everything is connected, and no action is without consequence.
That’s without even mentioning the extra bits and pieces you’ll need to take care of, from upgrading your stadium to bring more bums on seats and a greater gate taking to boost your team’s finances, and investing in a development academy to scout stars on the rise to grow your team organically.
Worse still, I managed to really piss off my club captain when he asked for a raise, then had to scramble to find a replacement first drop when he quit on me at the end of the first season.
But I think the key point where I realised I was hooked wasn’t the endorphin rush when I finally won my first game on the sixth attempt, or when I sealed my first transfer deal, or even the growing acceptance that I sucked and it was okay. It was when I looked at the clock on my Galaxy Samsung Galaxy S22 – yep, it’s Android compatible – and realised it was four hours later and I hadn’t walked my dog yet. Sorry, Bingo.
I’ve never played the famous Football Manager game, but I’ve had many friends, particularly ones in the UK, who seemingly don’t talk about anything else. This is cricket’s equivalent, and it’s exceedingly cool – I fondly hope it catches on and becomes a worldwide sensation that helps to get the sport to an even wider audience than it currently has.
It’s also free, which, if my maths is right, means it costs $0 to download and play, and has no ads that I’m yet to find, other than the video popup I watched to get an extra coin when finances started to become a problem.
Even then, it was the most unobtrusive popup you’ll ever see, and having been haunted by ads galore during my youth playing Angry Birds and Candy Crush, that was a most welcome relief even as I struggled to find a replacement bowler for my opening quick who wouldn’t know a good length if it bit him on the backside.
It has the feel and vibe of a passion project from a genuine cricket nuffie – Manish, if you’re reading, that term is only meant as an endearment – without the usual bells and whistles of a corporate monolith seeking to make cash and lots of it.
If you’re like me and still whirring on that cricket buzz with no matches to satisfy the itch, I’d thoroughly recommend giving it a go.
You’ll probably go better than me, not that it’d be hard.
Download Wicket Cricket Manager on your preferred device here
Get Wicket Cricket Manager on the Google Play Store
Get Wicket Cricket Manager on the App Store
Learn more about Manish and the creation of Wicket Cricket Manager here
>Cricket News
%20(3).jpeg)
0 Comments