u/Outrageous_Idea_1990

Simon Harmer’s performance against India in 2025 was a great example of how much control and experience matter in spin bowling.

His numbers across two Tests were remarkable

17 wickets at an average of 8.94
Economy rate of just 1.91
Strike rate of 28 balls per wicket
8/51 in Kolkata and 9/101 in Guwahati

What impressed me was how he used his variations without becoming predictable. He maintained a consistent arm speed while changing his pace, flight and seam position.

His use of overspin generated extra bounce, which was particularly effective against Yashasvi Jaiswal in Guwahati.

He also kept attacking the stumps rather than bowling defensive lines.
Years of county cricket with Essex clearly helped him understand his strengths.

He wasn’t relying entirely on turning pitches. Even on a relatively flat Guwahati surface, he found ways to trouble the batters.

Do you think Harmer’s success was primarily down to his bowling intelligence, or did India’s batters struggle to read his variations?

AB de Villiers was one of the rare players who could change his game completely depending on the format.

In Tests, he scored 8,765 runs at 50.66, including 22 centuries.

In ODIs, he made 9,577 runs at 53.50 with a strike rate above 101. He also holds the record for the fastest ODI century just 31 balls.

In T20Is, he struck at 135.17, and across his overall T20 career he scored more than 9,400 runs at a strike rate around 150.

He could spend hours defending in a Test, control the middle overs of an ODI, or start attacking from almost anywhere in a T20.

Different formats needed different approaches, and ABD understood that better than most.
Who else belongs in this conversation?

The Commentary Engine is ready and will be included in the October 15 update.
For now, the game will launch with UK-style commentary.

I plan to expand this later with more commentary styles and regional variations.

I also want the commentators to have their own identity inside the game, rather than just being a voice in the background. The idea is to make the commentary feel like part of the match and part of the cricket world.

This is the first version of the system, and I’ll keep improving it with more lines, match situations and reactions over time.

It will be released with the rest of the v5.3 update on October 15.

What commentary style would you like to see added next?

Photo: John Arlott commentating on a match between Gloucestershire and New Zealand in 1949. Photograph by Haywood Magee/Getty Images.

He made his international debut in 1999, but his career really changed when Sri Lanka moved him to open the batting in his early 30s.

At the 2009 T20 World Cup, aged 32, Dilshan scored 317 runs and was named Player of the Tournament.

He eventually finished his career with:
10,290 ODI runs and 22 centuries
5,492 Test runs and 16 centuries
1,889 T20I runs

Centuries in all three international formats
What makes his story even better is that the late peak lasted.

In 2015, aged 38, he scored 1,207 ODI runs at an average of 52.47, finishing as the third-highest ODI run-scorer in the world that year.

Sometimes a player doesn’t need more talent they just need the right role at the right time.

Who are some other cricketers who became significantly better after turning 30?

While developing Cricket Management Tycoon, I spent a lot of time looking at how real players should be represented in a simulation.
Brian Lara was one of the players who made me think differently about this.

Lara finished his Test career with 11,953 runs, 34 centuries and an average above 52. But those numbers still don’t fully explain what made him special.

He also scored 400* in a Test match and 501* in first-class cricket.

That made me realize that a cricket game cannot simply give a player a high batting rating and expect the simulation to feel realistic.

Some players are consistent. Some score quickly. Some convert hundreds into massive innings. Some can completely take over a match.

So while developing CMT, I started thinking more about things like consistency, aggression, conversion rate, form and a player’s ability to produce those rare exceptional performances.

The goal is not just to generate realistic averages.
I want the game to generate careers and moments that you actually remember.
Brian Lara is a great example of why cricket statistics need more depth than a single overall rating.

Which player do you think would be the hardest to realistically simulate in a cricket management game?

Mahadevan “Satha” Sathasivam is one of those cricketers who probably would have been far more famous if he had played in the television era.

In 1947, playing for All-Ceylon against South India at Chepauk, he scored 215. That innings became part of the ground’s folklore, and people who watched him often spoke about his batting with enormous respect.

His first-class record was 753 runs in 11 matches at 41.83, with three centuries. The sample is small mainly because Ceylon was not a Test nation during his prime.

Frank Worrell was also said to have rated Sathasivam extremely highly and considered him good enough for a World XI.

Another unusual part of his career: he captained Ceylon, Singapore and Malaysia.

His life outside cricket was complicated too. In the early 1950s he was charged with the murder of his wife in a major court case, but was eventually acquitted. He later returned to cricket and continued playing overseas.

Sathasivam died in 1977, four years before Sri Lanka received Test status.

Players like him are difficult to judge purely through statistics. There is very little footage and only a small first-class record, so much of his reputation comes from the people who actually watched him play.

Which other great player from the pre-Test era deserves more attention?

While working on the Women’s T20 AI model for Cricket Management Tycoon, the data showed that the overall scoring gap isn’t huge, but the way runs are scored is different.

Women’s T20 generally has fewer sixes, with fours and strike rotation playing a bigger role.

So instead of reusing the Men’s model, I’m adjusting the model weights around batting, bowling, match phases and scoring patterns, then training it specifically on Women’s T20 data.

Where the real-world dataset is limited, synthetic match data will also be used to strengthen the training set.

The goal is for Women’s T20 to behave like its own format, not just a slower version of the men’s game.

What differences do you think the match engine absolutely needs to get right for Women’s T20 to feel authentic?

Old Trafford, 1956.

England vs Australia.

Australia walked out for their second innings needing to somehow deal with Jim Laker.
They never really did.

Laker finished with:
10 wickets for 53 runs.

Every single Australian wicket fell to the same bowler.

Not 7 wickets with someone cleaning up the tail.
Not 8.
Not 9.
All 10**.**

And somehow, that wasn’t even the craziest number from the match.

Laker had already taken 9 wickets in Australia’s first innings, meaning he finished the Test with:
19 wickets for 90 runs.
There were 20 Australian wickets available in the entire match.

Jim Laker took 19 of them.

Tony Lock took the other one.
Almost 70 years later, Laker’s 10/53 remains one of those cricket records that sounds more like something you’d produce in a video game than something that actually happened in an Ashes Test.

Different era. Different pitches. Different cricket.
But taking every wicket in a Test innings?
That will always be special.

Jim Laker - Old Trafford, 1956.
10/53 in the innings.
19/90 in the match.

One of cricket’s genuinely untouchable performances.

I’m working on an update to the India T20 Career in Cricket Management Tycoon: two more teams and a different route to the title.

The main change is at the end of the season. I’m planning a four-team playoff setup similar to the IPL and SA20:

• Qualifier 1: 1st plays 2nd. The winner goes straight to the final.
• Eliminator: 3rd plays 4th. The loser is out.
• Qualifier 2: The loser of Qualifier 1 plays the winner of the Eliminator for the remaining final spot.
• Final: The two qualifiers play for the title.

That gives the top two teams a second chance, while 3rd and 4th have to win every knockout match. I want the final stretch of a career to feel different depending on where you finish, with the title still up for grabs after the league standings are settled. I’m still working through how this fits into the game, so the setup may change as I test it.

If you enjoy recreating upcoming seasons, you can also use Michael’s fan-made database editor to update player rosters and share your own database mods with the community. I’d love to see what you make.

Database editor: https://joynixgames.com/db-editor.html
Game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4717430/Cricket_Management_Tycoon/

Dennis Lillee is one of those players whose career was about much more than the final numbers.

He finished with 355 wickets from 70 Tests at 23.92, taking 23 five-wicket hauls. Against England alone, he took 167 Test wickets at 21.00. At one point, he held the world record for the most Test wickets.

What makes his story even more interesting is what happened in the middle of it.

Early in his career, Lillee suffered serious stress fractures in his back. He had to rebuild his approach and bowling action before returning to international cricket. He went on to form that famous partnership with Jeff Thomson and became one of the defining fast bowlers of his generation.

That sort of career is something I find fascinating when working on Cricket Management Tycoon.
A cricket career shouldn’t just be a collection of ratings. Players develop, struggle, recover, find form, decline and sometimes completely change the direction of their careers. Those stories are what make managing a squad interesting season after season.

Lillee’s career is a pretty extreme example of that.
For those who watched him or have gone back and watched the old footage.

what made Dennis Lillee so difficult to face? Pace, aggression, movement, accuracy, or something else?

5.2.0 is live. Most of the work went into the match replays.

Replays

• Players are now 3D-rendered models in your team's kit instead of the old drawn figures.
• Batters stand side-on and play proper shots: drives, cuts, pulls, flicks, blocks, leaves and misses all look different now. They also finish the shot before running, instead of setting off mid-swing.
• Fielders dive, pick up and throw with a wind-up. The ball leaves on the release instead of the first frame.
• Keepers crouch, take the ball, stump and appeal.
• Replays use a lot less memory, so the stutter on some machines should be gone.

Field setting

• The field diagram used to be upside down compared with the replay. It now matches: keeper's end at the top, bowler's end at the bottom, with the ends and the off/leg sides labelled.
• The replay now puts fielders where you set them.
• Fixed slips and gully showing on the leg side, the square-leg umpire standing on the wrong side, and off-spin turning the wrong way.

Other fixes

• Run outs no longer count as bowler wickets.
• Several bugs you reported.

Work has also started on a new career mode and women's cricket match engine. It's not in this update.

Bug reports welcome in the comments.

Travis Head’s T20 batting is more than just power-hitting. He reads the length early, attacks the powerplay from ball one and is willing to accept the risk of getting out.

His strong base, clean swing and ability to hit both pace and spin make it difficult for bowlers to settle.

For SRH, his impact goes beyond his own runs. Alongside Abhishek Sharma, he forces teams to use their best bowlers immediately and can almost win the powerplay on his own.

But it also creates a weakness.

if both openers fall early, SRH can suddenly lose momentum.

Is Travis Head currently the most influential powerplay batter in T20 cricket?

I’ve started working on bringing women’s cricket to the T20 Career in Cricket Management Tycoon, with the first rollout targeted for Version 5.5 around mid-October.

This will be introduced in stages, beginning with the core systems: women’s teams and players, squad roles, T20 competitions, season progression, match results and statistics.

The main challenge is getting enough reliable historical data to make the simulation feel believable. I’m building a controlled simulation layer around the available data and testing it against real-world cricket patterns before expanding the feature further.

The initial release will provide the foundation, with more teams, competitions and historical depth planned for future updates.
I’d be interested to hear which women’s T20 competitions you’d most like to see included first.

Cricket Management Tycoon on Steam

Marvan Atapattu’s first six Test innings:
0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0

Five ducks. One run.

For most players, that could have been the end of the story.

He was dropped. He went back to domestic cricket. He kept scoring, kept working, and kept earning another opportunity.

Years later, he finished his Test career with 5,502 runs, 16 centuries and six double hundreds — and went on to captain Sri Lanka.

That is one of the things I love most about cricket.
A bad debut doesn’t define a player.
A terrible season doesn’t mean the talent isn’t there.

Sometimes development takes years. Sometimes all a player needs is another opportunity and someone willing to believe in him.
Stories like Atapattu’s are a big inspiration behind Cricket Management Tycoon.

I want you to have players in your save who fail at 21, disappear back into domestic cricket, fight their way into contention again and, years later, become the player you can’t imagine your team without.

Because the best careers aren’t always the ones that start perfectly.
Sometimes 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0 is only the beginning.

Cricket Management Tycoon

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4717430/Cricket_Management_Tycoon/

I’ve started working on a new Team Owner Career for Cricket Management Tycoon.

The idea is to put you on the other side of the game: own a franchise, bid at auction, build your squad and manage the club over the long term. The mode will involve contracts, scouting, youth development, player personalities, budgets, board pressure and the decisions that shape your sporting empire.

This is still early development and isn’t available in the game yet. The interface and systems will continue to change as I build it.

I’d be interested to hear what decisions you would want to make as a team owner.

This Stephen Fleming quote has stayed with me while working on Cricket Management Tycoon.

Captaincy isn’t only about setting fields or choosing a playing XI. Your own form, results, player readiness and selection decisions all affect the pressure you feel as a manager.

That’s the kind of challenge I want CMT’s International Career to capture:

making difficult decisions across a full calendar and living with the consequences when things don’t go your way.

What part of captaincy interests you most selection, tactics or managing the squad?

Cricket Management Tycoon on Steam⁠

Fawad Alam may not always be the first name mentioned when people talk about Pakistan’s great batters but his determination, patience, and distinctive technique made him one of the country’s most memorable cricketers.

His journey is a reminder that talent doesn’t always follow a straight path. Sometimes, success comes from staying ready, working hard, and taking your opportunity when it finally arrives.

In Cricket Management Tycoon, Fawad Alam represents the kind of player every manager should value: dependable, resilient, and capable of making a difference when the team needs him most.

Would you build your Pakistan team around Fawad Alam?

Play Cricket Management Tycoon on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4717430/

#FawadAlam #PakistanCricket #CricketManagementTycoon

Few cricketers have mastered swing bowling like Jimmy Anderson.

For more than two decades, Anderson showed that pace isn’t everything. Seam movement, control, patience, and the ability to exploit changing conditions made him one of England’s greatest match-winners.

In Cricket Management Tycoon, building a successful bowling attack requires the same kind of thinking:

Managing player workloads and fitness
Selecting the right bowlers for specific conditions

Using swing, seam, and movement intelligently
Developing young fast bowlers over multiple seasons

Balancing experience with the next generation of talent

Could you develop the next Jimmy Anderson? Or manage an experienced swing bowler through the final seasons of his career?

Create your own cricketing stories in Cricket Management Tycoon.

Play on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4717430/

#CricketManagementTycoon #JimmyAnderson #Cricket #CricketGaming

Auqib Nabi grew up playing cricket on poor, pebble-filled grounds in Baramulla. His father wanted him to become a doctor, but Nabi never gave up on cricket.

After taking 60 wickets in Jammu & Kashmir’s Ranji Trophy-winning season and earning an India call-up, he has now joined Surrey for County Championship cricket.
A remarkable journey from local grounds to The Oval!

Experience your own cricket-management journey in Cricket Management Tycoon:
Play Cricket Management Tycoon on Steam⁠