International Cricket Captain 2000 Demo NOTES ON THE DEMO As this is only a demo version of the game, many features that will be included in the full game have been disabled, and some will not be visible at all. In this demo version, you will be able to captain a county side for two matches, or captain England in a Test match against Zimbabwe. In the full game, you will be able to captain any county side or Test-playing nation. COLOUR AND RESOLUTION Although the demo will run in 256 colours, we recommend that you set your display to 16-bit colour in the Control Panel/Settings in Windows. If you have an old machine and find that the game is not running in an acceptable speed, then switch to 256 colours using the following route: Start/Settings/Control Panel/Display/Settings and then select 256 colours DEMO ON A DISC OR DOWNLOADED VERSION Click on the zip file to extract the files to a folder. Unless you specify otherwise, the demo will be installed to Program Files/Empire/International Cricket Captain 2000/Demo. To run the the game, click on cricket captain 2000. If you do not have Winzip then a version can be downloaded from: www.winzip.com DIRECT X You will need Direct X 7a + to play demo. You will find this on the disk, or it can be downloaded from our website. To install Direct X run Setup. QUICK START. Double click on the Cricket2000.exe file in the folder in which you installed the demo. Click on the New Game screen, which will appear after any messages. Select a team and then click on the wicket button on the Team Selection screen (lower right). The Coin Toss screen displays pitch and weather conditions, and the teams for the match. Select heads or tails by clicking on the appropriate coin, and then select whether you want to bat or bowl. You may want to check the pitch and weather conditions as these will affect the run of play. On the match screen, click on the green bar (lower left) to select the Highlights level and select level of highlights you wish to view, then click on OK. Now click on Start Over for the action to commence. The best way to learn the game is to explore it by clicking on the various icons and controls to find out what they do. But... READ ON FOR A MORE IN-DEPTH LOOK... SQUAD DETAILS Clicking on this button will display the composition and averages of your current squad. A bat denotes batsmen, bowlers by a ball, all-rounders by bat and ball and wicket-keepers by gloves. Opening batsmen can be recognised by the (o) after their name. You will be able to make changes to the team selection from the Team Selection screen, which may be accessed prior to the next match. TEAM SELECTION A default team will be provided for you which can be viewed by clicking on the Squad button. The lower panel will contain the remaining members of the squad. If you wish to remove a player from the team, click on the player's name so that this is highlighted and then click on then click on swap from the drop down menu and then click on the name of the player (in the lower panel) you wish to replace him with. This will transfer him from the squad to the team. Use the scroll bars on the lower right of the screen to display player names, which are not immediately visible. To enable viewing of player types at a glance the following symbols are displayed: Bat, ball, bat and ball (all-rounder) and gloves (wicket-keeper). To get more information about a player, double click on his name to bring up his player profile. To edit the batting order of your team, click on a player's name in the current team and then click on move from the drop down menu and then point and click the position you want to move him to. To designate your captain, click on a player's name in the current team and then click on Captain. Use the same routine to specify your Wicket-Keeper and Opening Bowlers. To change the type of statistics on view in this screen, click on First Class, One-Day and then Career or Current. When you are satisfied with your team, click on Play COIN TOSS The Coin Toss screen displays pitch and weather conditions, and the teams for the match. Select heads or tails by clicking on the appropriate coin, and then select whether you want to bat or bowl. You may want to check the pitch and weather conditions before making a decision as to whether to bat or bowl, as the conditions will affect the run of play. PITCH CONDITIONS The following are various permutations of playing and weather conditions and thir effects:- Bounce Perfect: Favours batsmen Even: Slight advantage to batsmen Average: Favours bowlers and batsmen equally Uneven: Favours fast bowlers Erratic: Favours fast bowlers and other bowlers to a lesser degree Pitch Very Good: Favours batsmen Good: Slight advantage to batsmen Average: Favours batsmen and bowlers alike Turning: Advantage to spinners Sharp Turn: Big advantage to spinners Weather Very Sunny: Affects fast bowlers stamina Sunny: Slight effect on fast bowlers stamina Unsettled: Neutral Cloudy: Slight advantage to seamers V Cloudy: Big advantage to seamers The Light Meter When four lights are lit on the meter then the batsmen will probably be offered the light, though this chance is reduced if slower bowlers are operative at the time. Click on the appropriate coin to choose whether you want to call Heads or Tails. If you choose correctly you will offered the choice to either bat or bowl. Click on the batting or bowling icon to make your selection. Click on Continue to proceed with the match. HIGHLIGHTS LEVEL After you have decided to bat or bowl, you will be taken to the match screen. One of the first things you must decide is what level of Highlights you wish to see. To do this click on the Highlights button. As you will see, the parameters range from None to Ball-by-ball. The latter could result in a rather long game. If you select Wickets and Chances, this will display every edged or uppish shot; all LBW appeals and dropped and catches, and, of course, wickets falling. Selecting None will mean the match proceeds in text only mode. BOWLING If you bowl first then the bowling dialogue will appear to the right of the screen. The name of the opening bowler you chose during Team Selection should appear at the top of the bowling dialogue. If you wish to change the bowler at this or any other point in the game, click on the arrows just to the right of his name to bring up your team, and then select a new bowler. Click on the name of the bowler you wish to select. The new bowler will now appear at the top of the bowling dialogue. Click on Next Over to continue the game. If you have selected any form of highlights, the screen will change to an animated representation of the over, showing the highlight levels which you previously selected. If you chose to view no highlights, then the results of the over will appear instantly. If you wish to play the over ball-by-ball, then click on the Ball Tab. Bowling - Attacking and Defensive Levels You adjust the attacking/defensive level of your bowlers by selecting notches on the bar below the bowler’s name. The more attacking a bowler is the more likely he is to take a wicket, but he will also be more prone to conceding runs. Bowlers set to a very attacking level will lose stamina more quickly. Bowling - Stamina and Settled A bowler’s stamina rating is represented by the yellow bar on he bowling panel. The yellow dots will decrease as the bowler loses stamina. The green scale on the rim of the stamina bar is an indicator of how settled a bowler is. The green dots increase as the bowler settles into a groove. A bowlers stamina is affected by the weather and the whether or not he has been bowling very aggressively. Tired bowlers will have a marginally less chance of taking a wicket, just as a settled bowler will have a slightly greater chance of taking a wicket. Bowling - Setting a Line and Length To set a line and length for a bowler, locate the stumps on the bowling panel and then click on the area where you wish to ball to pitch. To set a line, move the ball to the line you wish to adopt: outside the off stump is considered defensive, middle and leg is the most attacking setting. To go over or around the wicket, move the arrow to the left or to the right. Note: in one-day games fielding restrictions apply. Bowling - Editing a Field and User Defined Fields The field setting will adjust automatically once you have selected line, length and attacking levels for your bowler. However, you can manually override these settings should you so desire. To do this, select the correct field setting and then choose the new field setting from the pop-up array. To customise a field setting, select edit and then use the mouse to drag the fielders (represented by numbers) on the oval to their new positions. You can "save" this setting by selecting the Save button. To load a user defined field setting, select the current field setting and then choose User Defined to bring up all your saved field settings. Select the field which you wish to use. The panel to the left of the Edit Field screen can be customised to display where a batsman is scoring his runs against a particular bowler. Action Replays To replay any ball from the over, select the Commentary Card tab and then select the ball you wish to see replayed. You can also use this method to view a replay when you are batting BATTING Click on a notch on the Defensive/Attacking bar (located beneath the players photo) to determine how quickly you want to score. Generally a high aggression will result in a higher scoring rate but the more aggressive you are the greater the risk of conceding your wicket. Batsmen who are overly aggressive before they are settled are especially prone to losing their wicket. Settled The bar next the player's photo has two functions: the green light indicates how settled a batsman is, and the yellow lights running vertically indicate how tired a batsman is. Keep Strike To protect lower end batsmen from the strike, click on the bat icon on the right of the panel. This will also result in fewer quick singles being taken. Lock Batsman Your batsmen will normally use the same aggression level against each bowler. If you wish to use a different aggression level against a bowler the click on the chain symbol. The computer will remember your aggression level against that bowler. To change this, click on the chain symbol again. To unlock, use the same procedure, except that clicking on the padlock now will unlock it. Once a batsman's aggression is locked in this manner, you may only change the aggression rating by unlocking it. The default setting is for the aggression bar setting is for it to be unlocked. Match/Player Analysis To get an analysis of a batsman's innings, click on the green bar and then select Player Analysis. Do the same to bring up a Match Analysis. You can also obtain this by clicking on the green bar to bring up a menu. Edit Batting Order When a new batsman is due to come in, you may select a different batsman than the one currently selected. To do this, scroll through the remaining batsman using the arrow provided until you find the batsman you want. BREAKS The game will pause for lunch and tea-breaks, close of play and whenever there is a change of innings. This will enable you to view the scores in other matches. To do this, click on the names of the counties you wish to see in the Latest Scores column. Use the scroll bars if you wish to see more results. To see the scorecard for a previous innings in this match, click on the button opposite the innings you wish to see. At the time of writing, the scorecards are undergoing a design change. WEBSITE AND SUPPORT The game will terminate at the end of the second match. For more information and general discussions about the game, please visit our website at: www.cricketcaptain.com If you experience any technical problems with this product then please seek advice from our technical support staff at the following contact points: Empire Interactive The Spires 677 High Road North Finchley London N12 ODA Tel: 0181 343 9143 (9.30am - 6.00pm) Fax: 0181 343 7447 Email: support@empire.co.uk DISCLAIMER International Cricket Captain is only a game, the results in which are partly influenced by statistics. Some players may perform better than others in the game but does may not necessarily reflect their real-life performances. The salaries in the game are entirely fictitious. SPECIAL THANKS TO: Bill Smith, Patrick Eagar for their wonderful photography. Jonathan Agnew for assistance beyond the call... ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Most of the player pictures used in the game first appeared in Cricketer's Who's Who published by Queen Anne Press and are reproduced here by permission. The photo of the Bulawayo cricket ground was taken by Chris Turvey of Empics and is reproduced by permission. Film footage used in the introductory sequence is licensed from Pathe News and TWI. The player database and statistics were supplied by Peter Griffith of PGR Computing. Thanks to Cricinfo for supplying ground information, and also to Wisden for their help with clarifying some of the finer points of the sport.