Cricket 2000

The Good
The best thing in this game would probably have to be the commentary from Richie Benaud and Ian Botham, despite it's inconsistent nature and each nation has it's own accents applied to the player voices. The ability to view player attributes when selecting the team was a major help compared to Brian Lara Crickets method of guessing/memorizing before hand, while the front end is very flashy like all EA Games.

The Bad
There is plenty to dislike about this game as a cricket fan, firstly you can only play friendly matches or take part in the World Cup. This means no tests, no classic matches, no international series and most bizarrely, no practice option. Admittedly the controls are overly simplified but not being able to figure out how to and when to do things until you're actually playing a match is stupid. While you can move the batsman down the pitch some what before the ball is bowled you can't move once the bowler has begun their run up, which basically defeats the whole purpose of advancing down the pitch. If you try to play an unsuitable shot to the ball delivered the game will make the batter automatically block it, this means your best efforts to deceive the batsman are thwarted automatically. When bowling, the only way to pitch the ball up or give a bouncer to a batsman is to bowl an extremely slow ball which is incredibly easy to hit for a boundary which is the complete opposite method for and result of a bouncer, while yorkers are still no where near as effective as in real life. The fielding is probably the worst thing in the entire game, there is no custom field placement option so you are stuck with a very limited selection of built in field placings. These are absolutely pathetic, especially for one day cricket. At best you can have 3 players out side the 30 yard circle but they are no where near the boundary where they need to be. One of the fielding positions that pops up in most field settings is so ridiculously fine, almost directly behind the wicket keeper, they have next to no use at all, while another field setting has two player standing one directly in front of the other like they are waiting in que. The fielders are incredibly rigid, there is no movement in them between balls and only move if to chase the ball or at the end of the over. They cannot dive to stop the ball and must run perpendicular to the ball until they have passed through the line of movement of the ball before they change directions to catch up with the ball. The worst has to be when the ball is thrown to the wicket keeper. instead of standing next to the stumps ready to whip the bails off when the throw comes in, the keeper stands two meters from the wickets, catches the ball, runs up to the wickets and throws the ball over arm at the stumps which are at his feet making it next to impossible to run out batsmen.

The Bottom Line
I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone, it would be very difficult to say this game was as good as Brian Lara Cricket. It reeks of a substandard product being rushed out to meat a licenced event (something that EA has been doing a lot of) with dozens of simple features missing. Give this game a miss and get Brian Lara Cricket from the bargain bin.