since I’ve been obsessed with cricket recently, I was looking to see if there were any good cricket video games. there aren’t a ton - the latest is Big Ant’s title Cricket 22 (following up on their previous Cricket 19 and Ashes Cricket 17). As the Ashes heritage suggests, they’re an Australian company and mostly have licenses for the Anglophone countries in the sport - England, New Zealand, Australia, West Indies etc. No India, Pakistan, etc licenses, although there is for example an “India” team with AI-generated players and logos.
sports games in general aren’t a great market - they’re a massive amount of work to make and super dependent on the ability to license, and licensing is a huge pain except for huge corporations like EA. Big Ant is fighting an uphill battle to even make these games, so (like my flight sim games) I don’t mind the price as much.
so anyway, I started playing Cricket 22 even tho a lot of reviews said it was a bit disappointing for the price tag (a hefty $45). what interests me is the career mode - you can create a cricketer and take him (or her, there’s also women’s cricket in the game) from the small club level, to the state level, to the international team. And you can get offers from T20 clubs as well (such as the Caribbean Premier League, no IPL license, altho there’s a set of asset creation tools and people have made them).
I really play sports games for the season-over-season narrative possibilities. I’ve created an all-rounder player — he’s a fast-medium swing bowler and traditional strokeplayer going by the extremely old-school Tamil name of VEERAPANDIAN VIJAY. i’ve given him big biceps and a very formidable mustache. he bats wearing gold aviators and a sharp baseball cap instead of a helmet. my plan is to take him from the mean streets of Tirichirapalli to the Tamil Nadu team and eventually the Indian national team, where he will hopefully captain them to many Test match victories.
the career mode so far is… pretty decent? licensing problems mean that altho I’ve created a South Indian cricketer, the clubs are just names of cities in the state with made-up logos and AI-generated cricketers. I’m a little impressed they did get the names of all these little cities in Tamil Nadu. you get a made-up league as well, including the same AI players who you get to face regularly. I’m playing for Tirichi and face off against Erode, Chennai, Coimbatore etc.
The AI players are a little sketchy on race to be honest, they’re mostly the right skin color for folks from South India, but the faces aren’t super convincing and you can see when they’re sort of reskinned white guys or black guys. Universal problem in the game industry I think. They don’t have very Tamil names which is a bit disappointing. It’s also kind of funny when you see an AI guy whose playstyle is modeled after a very unique real-life cricketer like Bumrah or Hasaranga. (There’s one guy in my save whose bowling action is a spot-on version of South African Paul Adams - the ‘frog in a blender’. Look it up 
Absolutely miserable to play against.)
I wish they had put a little more effort into developing the Career mode narrative side - there’s a few cutscenes with your coach and stuff, but I wish there was like, newspaper clipping from the Sports pages or something like that. Especially to chart your player’s rise from the small club level. (The bar for this type of thing in sports games was really set by ESPN NFL 2k5 which gave you a weekly Sportscenter recap with Chris Berman commentating highlights around the league.) The in-game commentary is pretty dire and often incorrect to the actual action but that doesn’t bother me so much, I’m glad that it’s there.
gameplay: it’s pretty difficult the way I’ve set it up honestly. I’m playing on Medium difficulty and “Classic Pro” settings, which means you have a lot more control over how you take on the ball as a batter, but also way more room for error. when batting, you have to judge the line and length of the ball (there’s a little marker indicating where it will bounce), then move your feet (left stick) and swing towards the field (right stick flick). If you don’t have the right footwork, timing, and shot selection, you will very likely get out. you can move your guy around before the ball is bowled, and also hold a button to select a batting approach (aggressive/precise/defensive/unorthodox). A precise shot will usually be a fast grounded shot, but the aggressive approach is more lofted, swing-for-the-fences type thing. Defensive is your standard cricket defense shot and is pretty lenient on the timing, compared to the others which are very precise.
I didn’t expect the level to which you have to adapt your approach to each bowler you face. Fast bowler with a lot of bouncers = defend fuller balls, and get on the backfoot to smash the bouncers to the leg side. Spin bowler with good length deliveries outside the off stump = wait for it, then dance down the pitch and hit it straight down the ground. (Press R3 to dance down the pitch!) Etc.
Also related to this, all three formats of the game are represented (20 Overs, 50 Overs, multiple-day aka Test matches). You have to adapt your batting approach to each one. True to life, the game is balanced so that risky shots are easier to take in the shorter formats, but the demands of scoring runs quickly also means that you don’t have as much game time to ‘get your eye in’ and really read the bowlers - you need to start hitting right away. The Test matches are a lot more slow-paced and you can defend all day if you want to. But eventually you do need to start hitting the ball, unless you want to get carried to victory by AI teammates. Also, it’s a lot more risky to play any kind of shot and it’s easy to get out cheaply. However building a strong Test innings is super satisfying.
TL;DR I am averaging like 15 runs an inning at the lowest level of play which is really not what you want. I’m constantly hitting a couple of boundaries but then getting out before my 50 because I completely mistimed a hit, swung instead of defending, or pushed for a risky single. It’s really rewarding to actually hit the ball far though. It’s giving me a new appreciation for the IRL sport.
Bowling — it’s just not as fun to me, sadly. I’ve started just simulating the match anytime I’m up to bowl. (Robust set of mid-match sim options in this game thankfully.) Like with batting, the game gives you a lot of control and expects you to get it right. Choose your run up, select your type of pitch (standard/outswing/cutter/etc), select your length, time the Jump meter to determine your speed, time the Release meter to determine your accuracy, optionally you can choose the ball’s seam direction, apply aftertouch with RS, add extra “effort” by holding a trigger… etc etc. It’s a little overwhelming. I really haven’t figured out how to make batters get out to me, but like real life I think it’s a combination of varying your line and length to confuse the batters into playing a bad shot. I’ll have to look up a guide.
People online said spin bowling is much better in this game than fast bowling — I created a spin bowler to see and honestly it didn’t feel a lot easier to get wickets. Spin bowling has a completely different set of controls (!) - select your ball, focus it on bounce or flight, hold the Spin joystick to maintain the spin, etc etc…
You can also choose to play your character when they’re just standing around in the field - the fielding controls are pretty simple - but I just sim through all that stuff. occasionally I will get a caught-and-bowled or run out opportunity when I choose to bowl, and that’s enough for me.
there are of course Arcade controls to make everything easier, but what’s the fun in that? 
It reminds me a lot of my short time playing Pro Evolution Soccer - tons of focus on gameplay complexity to make up for licensing issues - I wasn’t willing to put in the effort for that game, but I am moreso for this one. There’s a lot here to learn and improve at.
I’ll post an update if I get made captain, because there’s a pretty involved set of tactics possible when you’re a cricket captain - it’s probably the captain role with the most responsibility in any team sport - and that’s all in the game as well.
Overall I’m actually quite enjoying it, on Sunday night I played it till the sun came up. I’m improving at batting and hoping the hints of gameplay depth I see in bowling are borne out by wickets.