Ashes Cricket[1] is perhaps the finest cricket game available right now[2] and Cricket Australia has a lot to do with it. Cricket Australia (CA), of course, is the body that governs cricket in Australia and it has taken an active interest in video games to promote the sport. Last year, the board invested in the Big Bash League game for Android[3] and iOS[4] and was blown away by the results, particularly because it got 3 million downloads from India and 5 million overall, Cricket Australia representatives told Gadgets 360.
Big Bash League, of course, is an Australian T20 tournament where teams can bring in players from other countries but it’s primarily a showcase of the best talent Australian domestic cricket has on offer. Considering the Big Bash League has no real Indian connection, those are pretty good download numbers.
This year, with Ashes Cricket for PC and consoles, and the upcoming Big Bash Cricket for mobile, Cricket Australia is betting big on video games. Gadgets 360 spoke with Chris Simpson and Apurwa Sarve, strategy managers who head the gaming vertical for Cricket Australia, to find out why the board made this move.
“So the case study that we used is FIFA[5]," says Simpson. "Some statistics we used last year about FIFA promoting awareness of soccer… I know that FIFA has done a fantastic job of popularising the sport.”
“We don’t need to prove to people that we will get people off the couch and into the field," he adds. "We just need to prove that they’ll be playing cricket instead of Call of Duty[6]. Learning the players’ names, you know walking on as David...