Although England hasn’t been the inspired cricket team that it was last year there’s been more drama than a season of Eastenders, and Brian Lara is back again with Codemasters’ 2007 instalment of cricket action. But is it a yorker or a stinker?

Graphically the game is pretty sound, with some nice models of real cricketers- if you can’t tell who they are from the garbled unlicensed names. The character motion is probably the most impressive, with the bowlers all moving realistically and completely differently depending on what type of bowler they are. The batsmen swing with real weight and each shot feels different and needs different timing. Unfortunately, like the rest of the game there are a few niggling things which spoil the sheen, such as the glitches where when batsmen walk off the green in cut-scenes their bat jerks around like a mad animal under their arm. At other times the fielders will pick up the ball and facing the crowd throw the ball towards them, only for it to magically be thrown in the direction of the wickets instead.

There are still a few problems with the batting, such as the timing meter only showing you how early or late you were with the shot rather than helping you time the shot at the time. It is pretty easy to score sneaky ones and twos, as the aiming is quite precise and the fielding system is poor (which we’ll come to later), but scoring boundaries isn’t a common thing.

The bowling is the easiest to get the hang of, as there’s no real timing to learn, but after ten minutes you reach a stalemate: it’s almost impossible to bowl them out so unless you get LBW the batsman will get a guaranteed one or two runs from each ball. This is mainly due to the really poor fielding system that really does you no favours.

Sometimes the wicket keeper or bowler (depending on which end) will completely miss the catch and stand gormlessly while the ball rolls behind him and another fielder has to run in and get it, losing at least another two runs.

All the options a cricket fan would want to play are here, from the ICC Cricket World Cup to One Day Internationals and 20 over matches for quick play.

Overall, Brian Lara International Cricket 2007 is a fun game, with lots of skill and realism. Unfortunately the awful fielding system and a few other minor niggles really got to me when playing it, even when it only happened every so often. Fans of cricket will enjoy the great character animations and playing twenty overs against a mate, but due to the slightly irrational AI it’s definitely not one to play alone.