Cricket Manager: Run a Nation in Test, ODI and T20I

Cricket Manager: a fog of knowledge over potential. You see the range your scouts report, not the true figure, and it narrows as you come to know a player: a long-serving international is nearly exact, an unknown youngster wide open. A player's record, matches for you and a place in your squad all teach you something, and on any player card you can send a scout to follow him. How many you can follow at once depends on your chairman of selectors.

Cricket Manager: the dressing room has a pecking order. The Media tab now shows who carries weight (the captain, the vice-captain and the most experienced), how the senior players, the core and the youngsters each feel, and the effect on cohesion each week. Leaving a leader out of the side is felt by the whole room.

Cricket Manager: the press pack has a memory. Three reporters follow you through the career and each keeps what you tell him. Straight answers earn trust, deflecting and attacking players costs it, and an answer you gave weeks ago can come back as a question. Stand by your word and the press notices; U-turn and they say so. Trusting reporters run kind headlines, hostile ones do not.

Cricket Manager: more decisions in a managed match. The new ball in a Test or ODI is yours to call, the ODI middle overs are a decision, and after every managed match a Key Moments recap lists every call you made and the match's own turning points: its biggest stand and its worst collapse.

Cricket Manager: about forty new storylines, taking the deck past sixty. Over-rate fines and Championship points, conduct hearings, a ball-tampering clip, an approach from a stranger, a whereabouts failure, a star who goes public about being dropped, a captain who disagrees with your tactics, a rush back from injury, a leaked team sheet, a contract hold-out, homesick teenagers on tour, visa delays, security alerts, hostile crowds, pay disputes, a governance inquiry, rival franchise leagues, rivalry weeks, a player's family crisis and a team-mate who is not coping, among others.

Cricket Manager: your choices come back. How you handled a curfew breach, a stranger's approach, a ball-tampering denial, a contract hold-out or a pay dispute decides what happens weeks later, and the same call made the same way is remembered.

Cricket Manager: a crisis meter beside board confidence. Defeats, a warned board and badly handled stories push it up; wins and time bring it down. Above 60 it drags on the dressing room and the press and makes trouble more likely, and from 55 calls for your resignation, a letter from the senior players and an emergency board meeting can start.

Cricket Manager: a weekly challenge. Every week one scenario is dealt from a seed the whole community shares, so scores compare, with a board of the week's best runs. Your result also earns the usual stars.

Cricket Manager: share cards for your career. Make a card for any trophy you win, for your career so far, or for a challenge you clear, and send it to friends or post it.

Cricket Manager: when you come back after a few hours away, a short recap tells you where you left off: your last results, the board's mood, decisions waiting, injuries and the next fixture.

Cricket Manager: the backroom has opinions at the toss. Your analyst, batting coach, physio, seam and spin coaches and white-ball assistant each tell you what they would do, and they do not always agree. A weak specialist is sometimes simply wrong, and says so with low confidence. You can now set your call for the toss, in a managed match or a T20I.

Cricket Manager: Career Challenges, borrowed from the FIFA-career community. Pathway Only (an India of debutants), Associate to Champions (Canada to a World Cup), Fallen Giant (West Indies back to number one), The Journeyman Coach (a trophy with three countries), The Invincibles (an ODI World Cup without losing a match), The Treble (all three ICC trophies), One In One Out (a squad that can never grow, and nobody dropped ever returns) and Last Dance (New Zealand's veterans, with a retirement watch ticking). Each is a whole multi-season career with a deadline and a goal; finish sooner for more stars. They run in a save slot of their own, so your real career is never touched.

Cricket Manager: eight quick scenarios as well, short scripted spots such as a Zimbabwe side nobody expects anything from, or a squad with its best players injured. Each is scored out of three stars, and your record follows you across devices when you are signed in.

Cricket Manager: keepsake cards for career milestones, from your first win and first trophy to a World Cup, a long unbeaten run or the sack. They belong to you rather than to a career, so a new career never clears them, and signed-in players keep them on every device. See them on the Legacy tab.

Cricket Manager: match preparation is one screen with three panes (your XI, the coach and analyst, and the decision with pitch conditions and the series so far), and an analyst rated 6 or better now names the opposition's likely XI. The press room shows the full scorecard beside the questions. Squad Statistics keeps its header in view, and Legacy gains milestones to chase and the trophies still up for grabs.

Cricket Manager: Squads, Staff, Board, Calendar, Media and Fan Feed are now side-by-side panes that fit the screen and scroll on their own. Squads lists each format's squad beside a sticky player table, with the squad tick-boxes next to every name; vacant staff roles show their candidates at once; the Board tab shows your contract and what the board has written to you.

Cricket Manager: every screen now opens as one full screen of game. On a computer the dashboard is a single view (identity, season progress, record, trophies and board in one bar; next fixture, inbox, headlines and key players in the middle; board, objectives, rankings and fixtures at the sides), and the How it Works text sits below it. On a phone the next match comes first, with a Continue button that stays at the bottom of the screen.

Cricket Manager: the start screen is now a hub, with your career, next match, objectives and latest results on one card, and the new-career steps fill the screen.

Cricket Manager: a Fan Feed tab, with invented supporters reacting to your wins, defeats, runs of form, heavy results, draws, ties and trophies.

Cricket Manager: Test, ODI and T20I now play on the same live match screen and tabbed scorecard as the other games, and the player pool carries the latest rating corrections and squad additions.

Cricket Manager at /cricket-manager: one nation, one squad pool, three teams. The calendar starts in October 2026 with real fixtures where they have been published (the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in India, the 2027 Ashes, the ODI tours of the current FTP), then every country's tours at their real home season.

ICC events around you: the WTC final, the ODI World Cup and its qualifier, the T20 World Cup, the Champions Trophy and the Asia Cup, each with group tables, later stages and a final.

One player, three formats: every player has a rating in each format and an overall rating built from the formats he still plays, so Virat Kohli is an ODI-only player. Picking someone for a format he has never played is allowed, at a projected rating.

The board: season objectives, a confidence score built from results, objectives, the dressing room, the media and the budget, then a warning, a public vote of confidence with an ultimatum, and the sack. Job offers follow, from Full Members and associates.

Run the side: squads and captains for each format, a backroom staff to hire and fire (batting, pace, spin, fielding, fitness, physio, analyst, mental skills, selectors), central contracts, one-to-one chats and promises.

Play every match three ways: captain it over by over on the Test, ODI and IPL match screens, manage it from the dressing room and step in at the big moments, or take an instant result. Press conferences follow.

A living world: players age, develop, get injured, carry workloads and retire from one format at a time; youngsters come through every season; and stories arrive between matches, from a farewell series to a franchise-league release request.

Create your manager: name, nationality, age, background, and a portrait you build yourself (skin tone, hair, facial hair, glasses, headwear and match-day outfit), who wears your nation's colours once you have the job.

A new start to every career: a job dossier for each nation, a live interview with the board's chairman that sets their first impression, a contract to sign, and your unveiling as manager, then a short tour of your office.

The board's objectives are a checklist with progress: each shows how far along it is and where things stand, from a series score to a ranking or a World Cup run.

Picking your XI: each player's last five matches and his figures in the series so far, an assistant coach who suggests changes on form and workload, and a batting order you can drag and drop. A player brought in takes the slot of the one he replaces.

Series reports: when a series or tournament ends you see the result, the Player of the Series (or of the tournament), every match, and the leading run-scorers and wicket-takers on both sides, with a full report in your inbox.

A Squad Statistics tab: batting and bowling for every player by format, this season or your whole time in charge, sortable by any column, plus an all-time view that adds their real international record.

Your first job is to name the squad for your first series, and every series after that starts with a squad to confirm. Confirming it brings a pre-series report: the fixtures, the opposition, your form, the conditions and what the board wants.

Full scorecards for every match you play, instant results included, from the press room, the dashboard and the calendar.

A welcome guide in your inbox explains every tab, and the Staff tab now explains how each coach affects results.

A redesigned inbox: sender badges, message previews and unread markers, reports laid out in sections, and buttons that take you straight to the right tab. Every tab named in the office guide opens with one click.

Press conference answers now quote the match: the partnership that won it, the best spell, the top score, the opening stand. Questions about one player get answers about him.

Scorecards now separate batters who did not bat from those left not out.

The squad card names the format and says when a tour is already under way (the ODI squad after the T20Is, for example).

In every T20 game, DRS is now offered only for lbw and catches by a fielder or keeper, as in real cricket. Run outs and stumpings go to the third umpire on the umpires' own call, and a caught-and-bowled is checked for a clean catch, so none of them use your review.

Boards no longer fail you for missing the World Cup Qualifier when you qualified for the World Cup directly: the objective now reads "directly or through the Qualifier" and going straight through counts.

Continue now stops when a storyline decision is waiting, so nothing is decided for you while you are away. The Dashboard tab shows how many are pending.

The pre-series report only lists objectives that series can actually affect.

Starting a new career over a saved one now asks first, on the start screen, instead of at the end of setup.

Tidier details: readable dates on objectives and the job dossier, a ranking objective shows the places still to climb, the dossier lists only ICC events your nation can play, and the crowd only turns on you again after a fresh home defeat.

A fuller calendar: tours are spread across the whole season, and a long empty spell is filled with a short white-ball series, so your nation is never idle for months.

A calmer inbox: your own decisions, appointments, contract extensions and debut notes arrive already read, and a Mark All Read button clears the rest. On a phone, the dashboard now leads with your next match and any decision waiting.

Fairer boards: the strongest nations are asked for a World Cup semi-final rather than the trophy itself, mid-ranked boards treat a semi-final as a major target rather than a critical one, and boards of weaker nations renew your contract at a lower confidence. The game loads faster too: the page appears at once while the match engines load behind it.

The IPL window: each April and May, while international cricket stops, a full IPL season is played. You get an email when it starts listing your players and their franchises, and a review after the final. A new IPL tab shows the champions, the final, the points table, the Orange and Purple Caps, and every number for each of your nation's players: runs, average, strike rate, fifties and hundreds, boundaries, overs, wickets, economy, best figures and catches.

No more empty months: when an ICC event is drawn, sides that are not in it play short series instead of waiting, and if your nation has nothing in the next month the board arranges a white-ball series.

Press answers fit player questions: yes-or-no questions get real yes-or-no answers, questions about an opposition star are answered about him, and questions about a player's importance, temperament, spell, development and future each have their own replies.

Managed T20Is are now played ball by ball from the dressing room: set the tone at the innings break, at the end of the powerplay and for the last five overs, decide whether to review, and follow the wickets and the Super Over as they happen.

Player data overhaul: 38 players listed as batters who are really bowlers or all-rounders (Eshan Malinga, Dasun Shanaka, Will Jacks, Kyle Mayers and more) now bowl and are picked as such; T20I ratings built on a handful of matches are no longer inflated, which widens the gap between the strongest and weakest sides; and players shown by their initials ("NGRP Jayasuriya", "RG Sharma") now carry their full names, on scorecards too.

The Squads table shows each player's potential and room to grow, his international matches, runs and wickets in the format you pick, and his last five scores, with new sort options for all of them.

The coaching market changes every month, and wages, budgets and salaries rise about 4% a season.

Press conference answers now fit the question asked, the chairman is the same person in the interview and in the job, and the public mood shows whole numbers.

Press conferences draw on more than 680 questions chosen for what happened in the match, and the same question does not come round again for a long while.