Cream teas, white flannels, leather on willow, square leg.........if that gets you salivating read on....
The match engine is much slicker and together with the improved graphics it makes it much more enjoyable watching games over and over. I found myself gradually reducing the highlights to none on the old version after a couple of seasons but with this version I have played 4 seasons straight watching the key highlights in each game. You actually get a feeling that the players are real characters as you get to see the shots in all their glory. In addition the one day games now play out extremely realistically with a number of games going down to the wire with realistic scores. The first class game definitely needs a bit of tweaking as I've noticed that all fast or medium bowlers averages gradually climb and the scores tend to be on the high side. However this really is a minor point as it does not detract from the enjoyment of each match.
On the down side there have been very few changes to the other areas of the game in eight years and that is disappointing. I think the developers need to take a look at the most successful football management game of all time FM2007 and realise that people do like stats particularly cricket fans!!. The career records show the overall averages but it would be great to know where and when high scores were achieved, the ability to go further back than one year to see the development of a player and more records to beat - fastest fifty, century etc. It wouldn't be a big deal but for the fact that this is a game that is supposed to have developed over eight years.
The ability to manage any nation has been added and the international fixtures are all up to date as is the database although there are just a few minor errors concerning players abilities, allrounders as batsmen, bowlers as batsmen etc. Again this really is a minor point as the enjoyment is in signing new players and developing them albeit very limited in what you can actually do, still the old coaching and physio as in the original version.
All this said if you are a cricket fan this is an absolute must, I guarantee many sleepless nights where you submit to just one more game....