Pick one of the twelve Test nations and manage it for as long as you want. You choose the squad, hand out the central contracts, name a captain in each format and decide who gets the coaching. Then you take the side on tour, into World Cups and through a Test championship, season after season. Your players get older, they get injured, and one day they retire. Then you find out how good you are at spotting the next lot.

Every ball is played out

Matches are played one ball at a time. What happens comes out of the two players involved, the pitch, the weather and how old the ball is.

Win the toss and decide. Tell a batter to get after it, or to dig in. Change your bowler. Move the field. Enforce the follow-on. Declare. Take the new ball.

Short of time? Hand the match over and read the scorecard. It is the same simulation either way.

A Test lasts five days, and you do not have to sit through it in one go. Stop at tea on the third afternoon and come back to the same ball later.

You follow it all on a live scorecard, with ball-by-ball commentary, a field diagram and the run-rate charts.

A proper season

• Seasons run October to September, the way the cricket calendar does
  
• Your first season is the real one — the tours actually on, on the days and at the grounds they are really being played
  
• Tours home and away, with Test, ODI and T20 legs
  
• The Ashes is five Tests. So is India in Australia. A trip to Zimbabwe or Ireland is two.
  
• A fifty-over World Cup every four years, starting with 2027 in South Africa and Zimbabwe
  
• A twenty-team World T20 every two years, starting with 2028 in Australia and New Zealand
  
• The Asia Cup each September, fifty-over or T20 depending on which global event comes next
  
• A Test championship on a two-year cycle, scored off every Test on the calendar — so a series in February you had written off decides who makes the final
  
• Tri-series in some years and not others
  
• World rankings in all three formats, on the ICC's own points system

Picking the side

Name a squad before each series and it carries into the next one. Then pick your eleven with the full card in front of you: matches, average, strike rate, wickets, form and fitness. Judge a man on his career or on this season, whichever you trust.

The side you sent out last time is still there when you come back, so you are tweaking an eleven rather than building one from scratch. Get it wrong in the first Test and you go into the second one a bowler short.

Contracts, captains and coaching

Every season you award central contracts: twenty to thirty players, locked in once you confirm the list. You name a captain in each format, and he has to be one of your contracted men. The captaincy record is kept the way the record books keep it — matches, won, lost, by format — and carries on from whoever had the job before you.

Then you split twelve training slots between them, two at most on any one man, working on batting or bowling. They improve as the season goes along rather than in one lump at the end, and you can move the work around whenever you like. Every player has a ceiling. There are never enough slots.

They get tired, and they get injured

Fitness drops as a player is worked and comes back when he sits out. A Test takes far more out of him than a T20, and a long spell of fast bowling takes the most of all.

A tired player bats worse, runs out of steam quicker with the ball, and is likelier to get hurt.

Injuries come after a match. Some cost days, some weeks, some months. You get the news with a date he should be back.

Rest a contracted player and he recovers quicker, but he plays no cricket at all while he is resting, so his season's figures stop dead. Bowl your best quick through a five-Test summer and you will pay for it in March.

Every nation plays by the same rules, so your rivals lose players too.

Nearly 5,000 players

Every one of them has a real career record in all six formats — Test, ODI and T20I, plus the first-class, List A and T20 careers those sit inside — along with a real date of birth, batting hand and bowling style.

Domestic cricket ticks over in the background whether you are watching or not, so an uncapped player builds his own case: hundreds, five-fors, a best bowling you can go and look up. Put him on the watchlist and pick your moment.

Record books with history already in them

Your nation's records start out full. Highest and lowest totals, most runs, most wickets, most catches — the real all-time marks are already there, and your career is measured against them. Beat one and you take the board.

They age, and then they go

Players get better, then they get worse, and not evenly. A quick loses his pace all at once. A batsman's eye lasts years longer than his legs. Sooner or later they retire.

Each nation brings its own youngsters through, a clear step below the men they are replacing. Working out which of them is worth a cap is most of the job.

Change the database

There is an editor on the main menu. Search the whole database, pick a player, and change his name, date of birth, batting hand, bowling style, role, batting position or what he has retired from.

Your edits go into a small text file instead of the game's own data, so an update never wipes them. And because it is just a file, you can send it to someone else and they get your changes too. Other people's files sit underneath yours, so yours always win.

Worth knowing

• You manage a nation, not a club. Domestic cricket is simulated so you can scout on it.
  
• Single-player, and it runs offline. Your careers are files on your own machine.