Tips and Cheats for International Cricket Captain

Game Name :- International Cricket Captain

Produced By :- Empire Interactive

Priced :- £39.99 when new

Tips and Cheats sent in by :- Rodney.S.Black

What does the game involve ? :- You are captain of a County Championship team of your choice for the 1998 Season. You are also manager of the team. In the game you can compete in all compeitions for up to 20 seasons. As Captain and Manager you manage the side chosing who to train and who not, who to play in the team and at the end of the season who to sell and who to buy. The game gives you the option of captaining England if you get 100 points or more.

Tips :-

The game works on the averages of the players in it, players with higher batting averages perform better than those who have lower batting averages, with bowlers it is the reverse the bowlers with the lower averages perform better than those with higher averages. Therefore try and ensure your batsman have high averages and your bowlers low averages.

It is possible to win matches with any team, but it is easier if you have a top quality county squad with lots of top players - Lancashire, Yorkshire, Surrey and Essex seem to be the best choices.

Players being picked for England can be a major headache so have a good 'backup team' of players who can perform well, or better still manage Lancashire, only Mike Atherton gets called up on a regular basis.

When chosing what side you would like to manage think what batsman or bowler you wouldn't like facing, eg Brain Lara! and select the team with that batsman or bowler in it. Working on the if you can't beat them join them principle!

All rounders can generally dig a side out of trouble, ensure you have at least one of these as so to have an insurance policy, Ian Austin and Wasim Akram are fantastic options

As the game progresses Spin Bowlers become increasing more important, so watch out for teams foolishly getting rid of quality players, or buy your own. Players such as Mark Binden below, should not slip through your grasp, look at his averages,

By the way do you recognise the picture, it is David Byas, to give new players and indentity first remember there name in this case, Binden M, then find a photo you like in the Photo Database and in paintbrush click Save as and type in the name, in this case type in Binden M. I would also suggest that if you are short of an opening batsman put in some like this all rounder, an all rounder who likes fast bowling. It may work - it did for me in a test match - the 200 (not out) was scored against New Zealand in the other innings he scored 147. All Rounders are also very useful pinch hitters in one day cricket and again are more than useful.

When buying youth be careful, players of a rating of Excellent should be considered at first as this will translate to an average of less than 25 for bowlers and between 30 and 40 for batsmen. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you can buy a poor player cheaply and train him up to play well - your just wasting your money and your training points!

Make sure that some of your batsman like Fast Bowlers and others Spin Bowling, you don't want to go from 170/1 to 230/8 when the spinner comes on!

When training players think carefully, your opening bowlers and opening batsman are most important, so train these first, next train a couple of your all rounders as remember these could dig you out of a problem, next train any star players, and any remaining points should be used to keep top quality players in form.

You look a bit confused well see if you can work out where the 8 training points should go here :

Firstly the two opening batsman, I would Suggest 1 training point each to Steve James and Alan Evans as these seem the most likely to play, next Waqar Younis and Steve Watkin should have 1 training point each as these are certainly going to be the opening bowlers, so we've used up 4 points. Matthew Maynard is the star player and must have at least 1 training point, Stuart Thomas seems to be one of the better bowlers so he to would have 1 training point as a back up incase one of the 2 opening bowlers lost form. Robert Croft would proabably get the other 2 training points, training point no no's include Alan Davies due to his high average, Simon Jones and Michael Powell are also no no's because they have no average and your points may be wasted as these may be very poor players!

Watch out for the bogey men, the leg spin of Mike Atherton and Robin Smith they seem to get about 25 wickets per season, try not to be one of there victims by trying to belt them out the ground, use the same aggression as you would for any other medium quality spinner eg like the aggression used against Paul Weekes. Obviously this is completly unrealistic as Atherton has serious back trouble and Smith generally goes for about 10 an over.

In the Championship matches you have a full 120 overs to get the 350 runs to get maximum batting points, it's better to be 360/1 rather than 400/8 off 120 overs as the former gives the bowling team less bonus points. A bench mark is to have 150 off 50 overs if you are slightly behind don't worry, if you miles behind up the aggression rating to 3, otherwise aggression settings of 1 and 2 should be used throught. Agression settings of 5 or 6 may be useful if you are 7 wickets down for less than a 100 and you're trying to take the fight to the bowlers.

When bowling always bowl at leg stump with maximum aggression, if a bowler is being belted change him, if all of one type of bowlers are being hit (eg fast bowlers), change the type of bowlers being bowled to medium pace or spin.

In One Day Matches and run chases an aggression setting of between 3 and 6 should be sufficent depending on what the target is. Lower targets are easier and require less aggression. The target is to have no more than 77 runs to win off the last 10 overs with no more than 5 wickets down and 2 well set batsmen.

In one day's ensure that you play ball by ball when the situation becomes tight, it is a nightmare when someone like Neil Fairbrother manages to hit 22 off the penultimate over. Use restrictive field settings to try and combat this hitting, you should not have anyone around the bat in the last 5 overs - you need all the fielders you've got and sometimes more!

If you manage England during an English summer the performance of you county team may suffer, only chose to manage England through the English summer if you're sure you can win the series and the majority of the international matches

When your looking to buy players look at their ages; there's no point paying thousands for a 40 year old, in International Cricket Captain players over 38 slowly become worse apart from those players who start the game in 1998 aged 37 or older. Prime examples of players unaffected by age are : Kevin James (Hants), Kim Barnett (Derbys), Neil Fairbrother (Lancs), Tim Robinson (Notts) and Robert Bailey (Northants), all other players become worst as they get older so be tactile!

Don't worry about defending the tail by pinching the strike, most half decent tailenders will hang around, some even score 50 or even 100! In one game I played Lancashire were always struggling, 37/5, until Atherton and Hegg put up a partnership of 71, 108/6, and When Hegg was out for 64 (run out), at 154/9 it looked all over, but amazingly Glen Chapple scored 140 not out and Peter Martin 107. Then somehow the 2 forementioned bowled out Derbyshire for 204 to win by just 2 runs! - so it can happen!

Watch out for the West Indies International Side after 2004, they play 3 very good spinner's who can bowl sides out for less than 200!, therefore ensure you get at least some runs off the pace bowlers.

In some versions the game is prone to crashing at important moments, if you're doing well click save and continue the game with 50 runs left to score, that way if it crashes you can always regain your position, it would foolish to save the game if a) More than 7 runs an over were needed for victory, or b) There was only one or two wickets left.

Cheats :-

For use of the England squad straight away, without having to get 100 points, type in your name as Alec.

In some versions there is a small bug in the system, in the years 2000 and 2008 or 2010, a wicket keeper will appear in new players, not a wicket keeper batsman but just a keeper, ensure you pick him, he is impossible to get against any bowler or any form of bowling - run out or retired hurt is the only way to dismiss this player.

There is a way of changing the databases used in the programs and therefore cheat by changing the averages so there fall in your favour, to do this down load the ICC Editor, from the Software option at Indigo, who is availble at :

http://www.entiredata.demon.co.uk/indigo/

If all else fails then press reset! - you can always start the match again.

Tips supplied by Rodney.S.Black

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