Ricky Ponting International Cricket 2007

Our resident Captain Cricket, James 'estate' Williamson, takes on the cricket captain's cracking new game.

To the cricket-lover, Ricky Ponting International Cricket 2007 will feel like a Twenty20 match. It is fun, pure and simple. It isn’t (thankfully) a stickler for the rules of the game, nor is it always accurate to the feel of the game. But if you enjoy cricket, chances are you’ll enjoy this.

The game features different series and trophies, including a tournament mode based around the recently completed World Cup 2007 in the West Indies. The player must be adept at all the skills: batting, bowling and fielding, but the game’s implementation of each of these is a little flawed.

Fielding should be the simplest of tasks, simply wait for the fielder to approach the ball and time your pickup and return. Unfortunately the timing meter is frequently off screen and it’s sometimes impossible to tell when to throw the ball.

Batting is the easiest skill to master. Aim your shot based upon the field settings, adjust for the pitch of the ball and time the swing the bat. That’s all accurate to real-life, but unfortunately the choice of shots to play is too limited. If you decide to play a ground-stroke behind square, the batsman plays a cover-drive instead of a cut. This doesn’t impact upon gameplay in anyway, but for a real cricket fan, it takes away from the otherwise authentic feel of the game.

Bowling is much more accurate. You have all the variations available to you, including most of the deliveries Warney has in his bag of tricks, and the quicks have good variety as well. It’s the most satisfying part of the game. Like all the great bowlers, your wickets will mostly come from setting the batsman up. A few good-length balls swinging away from the batsman followed by a fast inswinging yorker can get him bowled or lbw. You can bowl wide of the crease, and also use a slower ball with great affect, particularly against lesser batsmen.

The lbw dismissal is the only imperfection with bowling. It’s very easy to get a wicket lbw by bowling around the wicket, but strangely, much harder to achieve it when bowling over the wicket, which is the wrong way around! Like the ground-strokes, it’s only a minor issue, and it’s still great fun, but for the purist it does take the gloss off the experience.

The likeness to the real players is quite striking, and the level of detail is very impressive as well. Muttiah Muralitharan’s unique bowling action is very well modelled, and the graphics are easily good enough to tell that it’s quite clearly Ricky Ponting on screen. The different grounds are very true-to-life: from Sydney’s Members’ and Ladies Pavilions to the media centre at Lord’s and the enclosed colosseum that is the MCG – they look excellent and are easily identifiable.

Multiplayer mode supports competition as well as co-op, and you can play online/via Xbox Live too. The controls, particularly fielding on the Xbox360, are a little counter-intuitive – many catches were dropped because instinct never lets you hit the right button. It would be much better if the catch and pickup-and-return inputs were the same. The PC version, with fewer of the frustrating delays between deliveries, is the more user-friendly option.

The atmosphere the game creates is excellent. From the West Indian music, to the crowd noise and much of the usual commentary team with all their classic lines, it will put a smile on your face.

The best part is the umpires always use Hawk-eye for their decisions, so you can’t feel hard done by. At least you won’t be fined for dissent!