Improving Cricket Games: Batting

India loves cricket. I love cricket and you are reading this so i will suppose that you also have a soft corner for cricket in your heart. As popular cricket is in real, the video games have not been able to transform that charisma into a good game, more often than not. I have played EA Cricket 04, 05, 07 and also Codemasters’ Ashes 2009 but somehow my appetite for a good game was left unfulfilled.
This post and other in this series are more an attempt to define what according to me should make a good cricket based game and though many features might be present in different games by different studios, most of them aren’t.

 
 
When you play cricket, what do you enjoy more? I enjoy batting, so let’s talk about it first. Batting should feel like a challenge and at the same time delightful to the player. It should not be such that either you smack the bowler for six sixes in an over for all the 5-days of the match or all your players register a duck in every match. For all the time i have played cricket07, i have hit sixes at will and although it feels good initially, repetition makes it boring. Imagine having to watch that over by Stuart Broad in which Yuvraj Singh hit six sixes, all day. Shot selection and execution should be redefined to match the levels of real-life cricket. And doing this isn’t all very difficult when we see how beautifully Fifa11 shows the real football. The cricket games at present look mechanical. The ball reaches the batsman, hit a combination of keys, ball soars out of the ground and repeat. Even Yuvraj hasn’t repeated his feat again, then how can a Harbhajan in a video game do that, all his innings. The level of difficulty that can be set at present just narrows the timing of the shot, it just doesn’t take into account the skill of the player to that extent.
Moreover, batsmen can have signature shots. For example, not everyone can play that switch hit like Kevin Pietersen does, so why don’t let him play that in the game too. Sehwag can have his “Upar cut”, Dhoni can have “Helicopter Shot”, the “Dilscoop” for Dilshan….and many more. Also, playing these shots should be made more difficult so that they don’t become repetitive. Added to this, why don’t they differentiate between a cover drive of Tendulkar and Ishant Sharma and a defensive block of Dravid and Praveen Kumar.
Also a feature regarding the form of a batsman can be incorporated. Say, for example, a batsman X made a century in his last match then his form rating should increase and he should be more likely to make runs in the next match. In contrast, a batsmen with a duck should suffer a dip in form rating and run scoring for him should be made a little bit tough. This new dimension will improve the skills of gamers as they'll have to score runs keeping in mind the form of various batsmen.
Adding these aspects will really make the batting part more challenging and at the same time engrossing.
These were my views about changing the batting aspects. Stay tuned for similar posts on other aspects of the game.