Boot up Cricket Captain 2021 and any long-time player of the franchise will be greeted with a familiar sight – the Lord’s pavilion providing the most traditional of backdrops for the main menu, which offers the expected options of beginning a new single-player career game, playing a tournament, or taking on other players online.

Career mode offers as many options as ever, with the option to oversee domestic first-class teams in England, Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa, West Indies and Pakistan, as well as Bangladesh Premier League sides, the eight Hundred teams, and any of the Full Member nations. For the first time you are no longer locked into a single international team per career, with the option to switch allegiance at the end of a season.

To quickly get a handle on the breath of the gameplay, however, I jumped into a 20-over World Cup campaign, and as a proud Scot I felt obliged to see how far I could take Kyle Coetzer’s team (not very far at all, as it turned out).

First up were our European rivals, likely a must-win game given the presence of Bangladesh in my group as well. Opting to bowl first presented me with an extremely similar layout to past editions for controlling my bowlers’ plans and fields, although a closer look shows some much-welcomed changes such as the mechanic for altering a bowler’s line or length, which has been slightly changed to be easier on smaller screens for those using touch controls.

Thanks to an excellent final over from Josh Davey, we were left needing 156 to win on a decent deck. After early wickets, debutant Scott Steel produced a sublime knock to glue the innings together and take it deep. The 22-year-old Durham batsman was given to me as an option for the squad having been named in a 40-player longlist by Scotland just a week or so before I got my hands on the game, an excellent example of the attention to detail of developers Childish Things.

Another player in a similar situation, Gloucestershire’s George Scott, then almost pulled it out of the bag, hitting three consecutive fours to leave just four runs needed off the last three balls but Vivian Kingma closed out in regal fashion, with a wicket and two dots to secure a Dutch victory and set the tone for my disappointing campaign. That unfortunately also meant I didn’t get the chance to try out the newly-added Super Over mechanic, which should add even more drama to tight finishes.

Every edition of Cricket Captain comes with updates to the match engine, but this year may be the most noticeable upgrade for some time, with outcomes now more realistic when batsmen are at high aggression. Whereas in previous years there have often been catches (or at least chances) at short leg in the dying overs of limited overs innings, this year those catches are now far more likely to be taken in the deep as you’d expect.

While the graphics can no longer be described as cutting edge, Cricket Captain 2021 breathes new life into the franchise with the updated match engine making a huge difference to how matches play out. As far as being a simulation of cricket, this year’s Cricket Captain captures more of the feeling of the sport than any other game I’ve played, and with updates promised throughout the coming months it will only get even better.