Cricket Captain 2020: One man’s voyage into the dark heart of fantasy...

Cricket Captain 2020: One man’s voyage into the dark heart of fantasy cricket

County cricket is slowly returning, but it's not enough is it? Once again, DEC has got you covered. From Thursday 30 July, we'll be brining you coverage of something a little different. Peter Newman has the details.

Cricket Captain
Pic courtesy of the author

“April is the cruellest month,” wrote T.S Eliot. But what did he know? Shut up Tommy, April is the best month. 

It ends “the waste land” of winter proper and heralds the delight of cricket returning. The new Wisden, podcasts, books – all are designed to give us that hope and expectation, which means we can forget that last season we averaged 2.4 with the bat and 33.9 with the ball.

Except not this year. Blah blah, stupid pandemic, blah blah – Where’s my cricket?

The answer I turned to, and I’m sure many of you did, was to the virtual world. Enter Cricket Captain 2020.

Cricket Captain, made by the London-based game developers Childish Things, is similar in tone to monster gaming hit Football Manager. The game allows you to take charge of a county and pilot them through a season: Sign new players; agree their contracts; pick your line up; set the aggression of your bowlers and batters and; even change the field set up.

New developments in this latest edition include rain breaks and The Hundred (shudders).

Of course, we are no longer in April but the cricket season as we know it has not returned. So, over the next weeks and months, Deep Extra Cover will be bringing you a series called Fantasy Cricket Captain. It will be my job to take charge of a county – exactly which one will be revealed soon – and I will then update you week by week on the progress. 

It’ll be just like a match report, but with the fury of my total non-mastery of the game to amuse you as we go.

Fantasy Cricket – the solution to cricket starvation we can all get behind. Especially if you enjoy the hubris of watching someone, whose big idea it was, fail in public.

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