Cricket, eh? The classic English past time, giving lots of elderly mad people a good excuse to fall asleep in deckchairs, occasionally waking up to mumble some half-hearted hurrahs. Anyway - the game. "Ridiculously poor - programmed by people who haven't a clue what they're talking about" unanimously concluded the late Dr Berkman in April 1990. Just to check that it wasn't merely Dr B who didn't know what he's talking about, I had a few goes and now, a few games the wiser, can safely ascertain that Cricket Manager really is, if you'll excuse the expression, a whopping great steaming pile of poo.

The game mainly falls down in two areas. Firstly, it's a management game, but I didn't actually think that being a management game would count as an 'area'. So firstly, it falls down on the programming. Boring lists, UDG defined graphics, unsensitive key presses, superfluous pauses even to draw up tables, no sound, predominantly BASIC - look wise Cricket Captain even out-craps the antique Football Manager, and at least Footy Manager was vaguely realistic. Cricket Captain isn't (area 2); the best bowlers are always the best batsmen (since when?), winning seems more like luck than skill and the whole idea of buying and selling players in a cricket game seems a bit dubious. Personally, I'd rather take a babe on an all-expenses paid holiday to Hawaii than play this boring, unoriginal and unrealistic management re-release.