Not as good as android cricket now being available on a stick.

Yes, that’s right, today’s entire King Cricket offering is a limp one line joke based around our love of robots and our luddite attitude to mobile phones.

We haven’t even explained what Stick Cricket is or included a link. That’s how lazy we are.

International Cricket 2010 is a rubbish name, but it’s a great game.

Batting

The batting in Ashes Cricket 2009, the last version of this game, was excellent. It’s now slightly better with greater control of each shot’s power. If you don’t try and knock the leather off the ball, you’ve less chance of getting out.

You work your way into the game taking singles, before unleashing drives and pulls when you’re well-set. Specialist batsmen are less likely to edge or miss as well, so you’ll find yourself marshalling the tail. These developments make batting more tactical. They make it better.

Bowling

The bowling was decent in Ashes Cricket, but not great. It’s far better now. The huge leap forward is in the fact that the opposition batsmen don’t suddenly think they’re in a Twenty20 match after eight overs (unless they are). It seems all the more realistic for that.

You find you really have to work for your wickets too. You can’t just keep bowling full balls, because the batsmen seem to get wise to it. You actually have to set the batsman up, trying different ploys to get the better of him.

How about a career mode?

Our one reservation is that playing  a Test match is pretty arduous. The tactical side of things is great, but you quite simply can’t be bothered playing as all 11 batsmen. It’s fun for a bit, but after half an hour, you really want a bowl, so you skip the innings.

Why do you have to play as every player? The game would be infinitely more engrossing if you had just one player under your control.

What would that mean?

First of all, your player could develop over time, giving the game a narrative and keeping you hooked. Early in your career, you would bat down the order and get a few overs and then according to how you performed and how you chose to train your player, you might get more responsibility.

Having one player would make each match a more manageable size, as you’d only play the parts you were involved in. It would also mean that you encountered different situations. Maybe you’d come in to bat needing to score at five an over; maybe you’d need to bat time. Maybe you’d come on to bowl needing to take a wicket or maybe you’d need to keep the runs down.

Training

Training would be a great addition. Your player’s batting would be poor at first and you’d struggle to middle the ball, but as you progressed, he’d get better and you could start playing more shots and longer innings. As a bowler, you’d get fitter, more accurate and maybe quicker. You’d also learn new skills or refine existing ones: doosras, googlies, swing, reverse swing.

All of this would make a game more absorbing and it would give the player a reason to keep playing. We’ll settle for five per cent of all profits if someone makes this game. Ta.

Until then, International Cricket 2010 is about as good as you’re going to get. Buy it from Amazon.

“Play as Freddie Flintoff and become an integral player for England in this fast moving, high scoring arcade cricket game.”

That should perhaps read:

“Play as Freddie Flintoff and engage in long, soul-destroying rehabilitation programmes that are ultimately unsuccessful. Slowly come to accept that your days as an international cricketer are behind you, even though you’re only 32.

“Now features Crying Into Your Puma Pillowcase While Having An Existential Crisis mini game.”

You can order it in advance and still have time to waterproof your Nintendo DS so that your salty tears of sympathy don’t knacker it up for when you want to play Club Penguin.

The 2010 version of International Cricket Captain is out. It’s a good game, but pretty similar to the 2009 version really. Our ICC 2009 review should tell you everything you need to know if you’ve never played the game before.

Other than that, we want to voice a gripe. To be clear, this is borne of playing this game for many, many hours, so it’s not a diss. Our gripe is with the micromanagement.

It feels a bit like two different games. There’s the side of it where you’re signing and training the players, managing the club and selecting the team. Then there’s the side of the game where you’re telling the bowlers where to bowl and setting the field.

We like the first part. We don’t like telling Steven Finn to bowl short and straight for two different batsmen every single time he comes on to bowl. It gets boring. Nor can we bothered changing the field by the time we get to 2015 – but we STILL want to see whether our young fast-bowling all-rounder is going to turn into Garry Sobers or not and we endure endless matches, going through the motions with our match orders in order to find out.

Is this a review? Not really, but we feel a bit better now.

Buy ICC 2010 here or download the free two-day trial.

If you want to keep tabs on our ongoing descent, you can follow us @TheKingsTweets. We probably won’t be doing another live review of International Cricket 2010 though, we’ll say that much.

Anyone interested in live Twitter reviews of cricket computer games can follow us again from about 7pm tonight when we’re going to have a go at day one of the Ashes.

This is perhaps the dorkiest thing we’ve ever done and we’re a massive, massive dork anyway. A live Twitter review of a cricket computer game. Even mum doesn’t think we’re cool.

Follow us on Twitter. Reply to our auto-updates and then marvel at how we don’t respond for a full week.

For the cheapskatey among you – which is pretty much all of you – you can get last year’s version for under £6. The 2009 version has the added benefit that you can’t choose to play as an Australian domestic team. International Cricket Captain isn’t about choosing from loads of LS and RF bowlers. It’s about wondering how best to combine your RFMs and your RMFs.

That joke worked better before we realised it was ‘IC’ and not ‘ICC’.

We get a penny every time a new person watches this. We’re thinking about buying ourself some crisps later in the year.

To be honest, we’re only putting it up so that marketing people stop emailing us.

Batting technique

Don’t imagine that you’ll be playing hooks and drives. What you will actually be doing is carrying out a pendulous swing as if you’re putting a golf ball. Your on-screen batsman will then do all the dynamic swivelling and swishing on your behalf.

There’s an automatic aim. If you switch it off, you’ll only aim badly and get distracted, so you leave it on. However, you then feel a bit disconnected from proceedings, so that’s no good either.

Bowling technique

It responds to speed, but again, it’s a robotic pastiche of the real movement. This time it’s more like casting a fishing line if you didn’t have elbows. You can add swing or spin by rotating the controller as you bowl, kind of like bowling a cutter.

Verdict

It’s just hard to feel involved. Playing against another player is fun, in the way that playing against your mates on a Wii game is pretty much always fun. We’d recommend Ashes Cricket 2009 on one of the other formats though, to be honest.

It’s free, if that’s what you’re wondering.

Play Howzat and let us know what you think.