Background
International Cricket Captain began as the final year dissertation project of student Chris Child at Birmingham University in 1992. Child's cricket simulation initially failed to find willing developers until Brian Walker, who had been working at Eidos on the Championship Manager series when Child pitch his idea to the company, moved to Empire and picked up Child's idea. The first International Cricket Captain was released in 1998.
Empire Interactive continued to develop the series until the company went into administration in 2009. From then on, beginning with the release of International Cricket Captain 2009, the series continued under Child's own production company, Childish Things.
Yearly updates continue to be released, with the latest being International Cricket Captain 2012, and a 2013 edition is due to be released this summer.
Although hugely popular within it's niche audience, the series has come under some criticism for the lack of change between editions. New editions tend to merely be updates to the player database with limited change being made to the interface or gameplay and only occasional leaps in graphical quality are made.
Gameplay
In the original International Cricket Captain the player must take control of of an English county team with the aim of one day becoming successful enough to lead the England national side. Later iterations have added the ability to coach sides other than England and in other domestic competitions, such as the Australian state championship and the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Players must control team selection, tactics and manage their squads training and fitness in between matches. During the close season contract negotiations take place in which players are transferred between clubs and can retire from the game altogether.
ICC games utilise a comprehensive database of statistics on every cricketer in order to help the player select their team based on each players form and ability.
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