Introduction

Cricket 24 arrives like a dramatic new season of a very polite soap opera where characters wear pads instead of suits. On Xbox Series X/S, Big Ant Studios hands you the remote and a roster of real faces - over 200 of them rendered with photogrammetry - then asks you to decide who will wear the hero's cap and who will be cast off to the pavilion of forgotten wides. This is the official game of the 2023 Ashes series and the eighth entry in an ongoing cricket saga, so it comes preloaded with expectations, licensed tournaments and more than 50 stadiums. If you were hoping for a tidy, button-mashing arcade romp, Cricket 24 will gently nudge you toward nuance; if you want to shepherd a player's career or reenact iconic matches, the authenticity and licensed teams will feed that craving. The game is a love letter to cricket fans, written in a slightly earnest font and bound with the in-house engine that powers Big Ant's vision of the sport.

Gameplay

Cricket 24's gameplay on Xbox Series X/S is where the plot thickens and the character arcs truly earn their close-ups. At a glance, the game offers single-player and multiplayer modes, and presents a buffet of real-world tournaments: The Ashes, KFC BBL, Weber WBBL, The Hundred, the Caribbean Premier League, the newly included Pakistan Super League, and a selection of professional Indian T20 teams. These competitions give each match a raison d'etre beyond scoreboard numbers - they provide context, stage directions and stakes for the athletes who populate the game. The 'characters' in this tale are the players themselves, and Cricket 24 leans into their celebrity by faithfully reproducing faces and mannerisms. Over 200 players are present with photogrammetry-driven likenesses, which means Pat Cummins, Meg Lanning, Ben Stokes and Heather Knight don't just exist as names on a team sheet: they arrive with presence. Playing as Pat Cummins feels like directing a stern general: your fast bowlers have an aura of command, field settings get obeyed and the pace attack becomes a conductor's orchestra. Meg Lanning is the ice-cold tactician; when you marshal the women's sides or hand the control to her persona, batting feels procedural, efficient and quietly devastating. Ben Stokes fills the cinematic anti-hero role: he is the player you use when you want to manufacture a comeback, to flip the script on a dreary run chase. Heather Knight is the steady captain whose arc is veteran reliability, the kind of figure who steadies the dressing room and turns pressure into strategy. Mechanically, batting and bowling require timing, placement and a modest amount of strategy. The game's input fidelity on the Series X/S controller is generally solid; the haptics and responsive sticks make aiming and power modulation feel tactile. The AI, meanwhile, plays the role of supporting cast: competent, occasionally theatrical, and sometimes prone to making plot choices that demand player intervention (a dropped catch here, an odd bowling change there). Multiplayer matches provide the improvisational theatre that cricket thrives on - you will witness glorious collaborations and baffling betrayals from human opponents in equal measure. Where Cricket 24 earns extra applause is in the licensed ecosystems it recreates. Playing a BBL night match under the lights, or guiding an Ashes Test across five days, gives players an emotional arc to follow. The tournaments are more than menu items; they are acts in which personalities can evolve. Use a few seasons to shepherd a lesser-known player through domestic competitions and watch as their photoreal face goes from bench-warmer to headline star. That progression is satisfying and underscores why licensing matters: it lets the game sell you micro-stories within a macro-season. The in-house engine is both protagonist and temperamental guest star. It delivers reliable physics and realistic ball trajectories, but it occasionally stumbles on animation transitions or crowd reactions. Those hiccups rarely derail a match, though they can break immersion long enough to remind you you're controlling pixels, not destiny. Still, the core experience - timing a drive, setting an imaginative field, executing the yorker that wins you a final - is gratifying, especially when played with friends or in long single-player campaigns where each match contributes to a larger narrative. The balance of accessibility and depth is commendable. Newcomers can pick up a quick match and learn basic controls without needing a PhD in cricket mechanics, while experienced players will find enough nuance to obsess over line, length and match-ups. The game's licensed tournaments and authentic rosters make those obsessions meaningful because the scoreboard changes feel consequential, as though you are shaping a character's arc from hopeful rookie to national hero.

Graphics

Cricket 24 leans hard on realism as part of its storytelling toolbox. Photogrammetry gives more than 200 players faces that actually look like the people whose names they carry; the cover quartet - Pat Cummins, Meg Lanning, Ben Stokes, Heather Knight - are convincing stand-ins for the athletes they represent. On Xbox Series X/S, player models, stadium textures and pitch detail look crisp. Lighting does a lot of heavy lifting, selling the difference between a sun-baked Test afternoon and a neon-soaked BBL night. The more than 50 officially licensed stadiums are the stage sets that make each match feel distinct: the angle of sunlight in Adelaide, the crowd density in a packed Big Bash arena, or the more austere vibe of certain international grounds. There are moments when the engine's limitations are visible: animation blending can be awkward when moving from celebration into active play, and crowd behaviour occasionally lapses into generic loops. These are not catastrophic flaws; they read like the occasional continuity error in a long-running show. The overall presentation succeeds because the faces matter, the stadiums matter and the camera work during replays and highlights often nails the dramatic beats that a cricket fan wants to savor. On the Series X/S, load times and frame stability are generally well-handled, keeping you in the action rather than waiting around in the dressing room.

Conclusion

Treat Cricket 24 as a character-driven anthology rather than just another sports sim. It gives you the licensed players and tournaments to craft satisfying arcs - rookies become stars, captains learn to shoulder weight, and hot-headed hitters can be tamed into reliable match-winners. Big Ant Studios and Nacon have built a game that rewards investment: the more time you spend with its rosters and tournaments, the richer the stories become. The in-house engine occasionally trips on animation polish and crowd variety, but the photogrammetry, licensed competitions and authentic atmosphere more than compensate. For Xbox Series X/S players who love cricket, Cricket 24 is a compelling season ticket. For everyone else, it might be the nudge you need to understand why 22 yards can feel like an emotional lifetime. Score: 7.5/10 - a solid season, with room for an even more dramatic next chapter.

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