Cricket 2005 due this summer

By Tom Bramwell Published 25 April, 2005

EA steps up to the crease. Click through to find out how we got from wickets to beached sea-dwelling mammals in just four paragraphs.

Electronic Arts has announced Cricket 2005 for PS2, Xbox and PC. Come this summer, fans of the sport will be able to take control of a fully licensed English team, compete in Twenty20 and regular county cricket and marvel at the TV-style presentation with commentary from Richie Benaud. Wicket.

Cricket 2005 is being developed by EA Canada and HB Studios and will feature the likes of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in addition to the English team. EA is also promising all the county teams and tournaments, more than 35 stadiums, and a create-a-player facility so that you can add anybody who might not be on the roster.

Typically EA is aiming for players with hugely detailed faces and bodies, and is employing more than 1,000 motion-captured animations. Bowlers will have distinctive actions, and batsmen will have more control than previous Cricket titles (like Cricket 2002, which was recently re-released on a PC budget label).

Amongst the improvements will be the ability to dive and prevent a run out. Or just for the hell of it. Hopefully you'll be able to showboat on boundary-bound slogs by diving repeatedly in a lurching fashion reminiscent of flapping seal on a large trampoline.

Cricket 2005's chief source of competition will be Codemasters' Brian Lara International Cricket, which by curious quirk of fate (read: by design) is also due out on PS2, Xbox and PC this summer.

Codies' Brian sim has already been given the blessing of the hooded elders of the International Cricket Council, and will feature officially sanctioned versions of the Cricket World Cup and Champions Trophy.

You can find screenshots of Cricket 2005 here.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (5) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • RiverMan #1 7 years ago

    Arghh! Which one to buy?? Looking forward to EG reviews.

    Actually, given Fifa Street I think I have an idea of who to go for....

  • Clive_Dunn #2 7 years ago

    Lara for me unless the reviews are staggeringly poor - every single EA cricket game has been utterly dreadful.

    The serial key for cricket 2005 is M0t0rb1rk35.

  • afray #3 7 years ago

    Looking at those screenies, it looks like the game has hardly moved on since its start in 2001ish. The versions so far have been dire.

    It'll be BLC for me, because I've read no comments or reviews on the actual gameplay, but the brand pwns me. :-)

    Wish we could have county/20twenty stuff in BLC, though. Dying for a good season mode.

  • Eighthours #4 7 years ago

    *takes out crystal ball*

    BLC is considerably better.

    Cricket 2005 sells a gazillion more copies.

    Here endeth the EA marketing lesson.

  • posh_geordie #5 7 years ago

    Post deleted at 18:45:04 02-01-2012