Though immensely popular in real life, cricket isn't exactly a sport that begs to be turned into a computer game. Up until now, Audiogenic has been the only company to offer anything particularly worthy on the Amiga, and even they seem to have resorted to simply releasing the same product every couple of months under a different nom de voyage.

Well, Grandslam is hoping to change all that with an Australian product going by the rather 'ground-breaking' name of International Test Series Cricket. Around the office, this has been abbreviated to ITS Cricket, with hilarious consequences...

"Morning Matt." chirped the ever-ginger Andy, "What's that you're playing, then?"
"ITS Cricket," replied the stallion known to you all as Mr. Broughton
"Yes I know it's cricket, but what is it called?"
"No, ITS Cricket."
"Look don't get funny with me, beard-face!"
"Don't raise your voice at me, you Welsh chock! ITS CRICKET!"
"Right that's it fuzzy chops. Cop this!" Ooghya!

Anyway, suffice it to say, if this was The Beano, there'd be a huge spinning cloud of dust at this point, with arms and legs occasionally popping in and out, accompanied by thwacks and flashes. Er, anyway... Cricket. Yeah.

I'm probably in about as good a position to comment on cricket games right now as I'll ever be having only just finished with Audiogenic's Battle For The Ashes and a big, 'well done' certainly goes to the developers, who've actually managed to create a new control system for a cricket game (which is quite something in itself).

When it comes to bowling, you have a number of approaches to choose from, all of which are affected by the type of bowler currently active (i.e. you'll get more options with a leg-spinner than a fast bowler). Whoever's bowling uses the mouse to first make these selections and then control the run up, while a quick clik at the right moment sends the ball on its way.

A targeting box allows the bowler a few seconds to zero in, and then it's over to the bat man who uses the joystick to a select and execute one of twelve strokes. Oh, Mr Benaud, it's all just too much! This way for the Verdict, if you please...

Rather unfortunately, though ITS Cricket contains a number of interesting and innovative features, the first thing that hits you is how appalling it looks and how poor the sound is. A damning opening sentence I know, but one that can't be avoided I'm afraid.

I've never been a great fan of digitised graphics, even when they're done well - which isn't the case here - and why anyone would want a bowler to be represented by five frames of a badly digitised figure rather than an attractive set of sprites... er, I dunno.

This graphic style makes ITS Cricket somewhat unique, but also limits the characters; with even the batsman down to only two or three jumpy animations for each stroke. The sound, though an improvement on the earlier versions we saw, is still fairly nasty; with a never-ending crowd murmur being cut off every now and then to make way for a crackly sampled voice announcing "over" or giving commentary such as "oh, good delivery" etc.

Unfortunately (again) the way these clips land is a tad ungraceful - cutting the crowd silent, crashing in, and then zipping off again - and there's no consistency to their volume or quality. Presentation aside, the gameplay is okay, with a better control method than we've seen before - although I tended to just go through the motions of bowling (yawn) until it was time to bat.

The difficulty level is high, and while you fumble around in the outfield desperately trying to pick up the ball, the fielding CPU team reacts so quickly that you have to build up your score one run at a time, or risk being run out by an unfeasibly accurate throw.

So ITS Cricket needs to be a two-player game to be much fun, and though Andy and I got bored after a few hours of doing much the same thing over and over (no pun intended), I'm sure the real cricket nuts will find enjoyment here. How many of our readers are cricket nuts? I've no idea, and so this mark is for the general games playing public. Thus...

ITS Cricket runs on all the Amigas and doesn't seem to suffer from any speed changes. As to a CD32 version... well, we don't actually know at this point whether one will be arriving at any stage, but I can't see it happening personally. Which isn't really too much of a bummer.