Let me preface this by saying that this is not a particularly good game. Having said that, it's bloody fun.

If there's one thing more niche than a cricket game, it's a cricket game on the Wii. If cricket had a more mainstream appeal in the US or Japan, we could have seen some properly good cricket games with motion controls. Sadly, barring some miracle on the Switch, I think this is as good as we're likely to get.

Content

There's not all that much to Wii Cricket. You pop it in, and you play. All teams and modes are available immediately. The developers managed to obtain licenses to use the real names of the Australian and English players to add a bit more fun to the Ashes mode. But it's honestly a lot more fun to play as other teams who were not so fortunate with licensing. Approximately 75% of any creativity in this game went in to coming up with the knockoff versions of professional athletes' names. Kyle Mills -> Kelly Moles. Jesse Ryder -> Jamie Raider, etc.

While funny, they might have missed a trick by not obtaining licensing for the Indian team. If you're making a cricket game, why not aim for your biggest possible audience?

Gameplay

There are 3 fundamentals to the game of cricket: Batting, bowling, and fielding. Wii Cricket automates fielding to free up a third of your brain. Basically, set a baseball-style infield and outfield, and you will blunt most teams. No effort.

This leaves us with batting and bowling as the main gameplay elements. How do you translate bowling to a Wii remote? The same way every other game that incorporates a throwing function, really. There is an element of timing. Once the run-up has been initiated, the remote must be flicked at the correct time to release the ball. Better timing is rewarded by making the ball harder to hit for the batsman. A slower or faster delivery is available by way of a change-up. Swing or spin can be boosted by rubbing the remote against your leg (yes, really) - just like real cricket! Who needs to go outside?

And now we come to batting. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the single most intuitive aspect of any cricket game, ever. You hold the remote like a bat. You swing the remote like a bat. You let go of the remote and it hits your TV as though you actually threw a bat. Seriously, wear the wriststrap. It is a joy to perfect the timing of a swing and send the ball sailing past the best teams in the world. With a very small amount of practice, you can just about hit any ball for 6, even the perfectly-timed deliveries mentioned above, and all this without even utilizing Wii motion Plus. This is what the Wii remote was made for.

I think it's fair to say that cricket doesn't really have a huge gaming appeal, due in large part to its length. The developers duly included hyper-short (for cricket) modes of 5 and 10 over exhibition matches. If you're so inclined, however, you can genuinely play an entire 5-day, up to 450 over (an over being 6 deliveries each) test match. Those are real numbers I just wrote. At least the game cuts out the time between deliveries. But this is an easy game, and I mean EASY.

Like the real game of cricket, Wii Cricket is skewed in favour of the batsman. You might need to have a vague understanding of bowling to do well as the bowling side, but you can swing the remote to batting victory with your eyes closed. Test matches, the ultimate flagship of professional cricket, are made a mockery of. What in the real world (or even in other cricket games) would take hours of focus and tactics, now take just a couple of minutes of remote-wriggling. You can routinely post scores of 1000+ in an innings once you get the hang of things. In real-world cricket, an average score might be 350. Realism is not this game's strength.

Graphics

It's a Wii game from 2009.

Other stuff

The priorities of this game are all over the show. There are options to change weather conditions which functionally do nothing to alter the game, though they really should. Given that weather often plays such a huge part in how cricket is played, this seems like something they could have spent another 10 minutes on. On the other hand, they got actual voice commentary from real cricket commentators. Mark Nicholas leads the charge - his voice is the one you'll hear the most of. Also featured are Shane Warne, the late Tony Grieg, Michael Holding, and they even dragged Ian Botham in to give approximately 3 very grudging lines. Seriously, he did not sound thrilled to be there.

Also worth noting are the accessories that came with the game. Cricket bat and ball attachments for your Wii remote. You can't make this up. This game was released to coincide with the 2009 Ashes series, but I'm not sure that explains it. Do yourself a favour and look up pictures of the accessories. My words can't really do them justice.

Final thoughts

Sometimes I feel like this game isn't real. I often find myself thinking about it on particularly rainy days, or when my wrist starts to hurt randomly. I have genuinely honestly truly sunk 50+ hours into this, and I almost don't regret it. If you like cricket, it's a great way to enjoy the feeling of winning without having to actually try. If you don't like cricket, it's a weird view into the nuances of the world's most complicated game.

This game has a proud spot on my shelf, and I would dare to argue that it ranks as one of the top 3 cricket games of all time. Something tells me I'll be dusting off the Wii (or maybe rubbing it on my leg) in the near future.