Big Ant Studios had a licence and a problem. Ashes Cricket, released in 2017 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, arrived with the full rights to the men’s and women’s 2017/2018 Ashes tours — the first time the studio’s cricket games had been officially licensed to modern teams and players after the Don Bradman Cricket titles. That licence is the whole pitch: real squads, real kits, the rivalry as it actually stood that Australian summer. What the game does with that access is where the argument starts.
The 2017/2018 Ashes licence
The licence does real work. You can take either England or Australia through the Ashes series, or step out as an individual star player rather than steering the whole side. That second option matters more than it sounds. Career play as one man on the field changes how a cricket game breathes — you wait, you field, you get one innings to prove something. Ashes Cricket gives you the men’s and women’s tours both, which is not a small thing. The women’s Ashes is in the box, licensed, playable. Big Ant could have shipped the men’s series alone and called it a day. It didn’t.
The modes are single player, multiplayer and co-operative, and the game lists itself as sport and indie. The summary promises fast-paced action, big hits and skill, rendered more realistic and authentic than before. That is the claim. It is marketing copy, not a review.
Building players in the cricket academy
Here is the feature that carries the most weight: a player creation tool. You can build real players and publish them on the game’s “cricket academy”, or drop them into the series or into personal player careers. Read that again. The academy turns the roster into something the community can author and share.
That is the smartest decision in Ashes Cricket. A licensed game with a fixed roster ages in a season. A licensed game with an academy gives players a way to build and publish real players and use them in the series or in personal careers. Big Ant understood that cricket fans are obsessive about detail in a way few sports audiences match, and it handed them the tools.
Where the authenticity holds
The official licence to modern teams and players is the headline upgrade over the Don Bradman Cricket titles. Names, teams, the tours themselves — the game has them. Playing as England or Australia through the 2017/2018 Ashes, or as one player inside that series, is the core loop, and it is a loop the licence makes possible.
The realism claim is harder to grade from a feature list. Big hits, fast action, skill — that is what the summary says, and the summary is selling the game. The series is the spine of the licensed content. Everything else hangs off it.
What the licence does not fix
A licence is access, not craft. Ashes Cricket has the rights, the tours, the academy and the modes, and none of that tells you whether the ball comes off the bat right, whether the fielding reads cleanly, whether a session of Test cricket feels like a session of Test cricket. Those are the questions a cricket game lives or dies on, and they are not questions a licence answers.
The genre tag says sport and indie. Indie is honest here. The ambition is real, and the polish is where an indie cricket sim always gets tested.
How Ashes Cricket sits in Big Ant’s run
Set it against the studio’s own history and the picture sharpens. The Don Bradman Cricket titles came first. Ashes Cricket is the step after them, the one where the licence finally arrived. Then Cricket 19 followed in May 2019, two years later.
By what each Big Ant cricket game secured, the order is plain:
- Ashes Cricket (2017) — the first Big Ant cricket game officially licensed to modern teams and players, with the full 2017/2018 Ashes rights.
- Cricket 19 (2019) — the sequel, released two years on.
- The Don Bradman Cricket titles — the run before the licence existed.
That list is not a quality ranking. It is a ranking of access, and access is what Ashes Cricket changed. The Don Bradman games came before the licence. Ashes Cricket is the one that got it.
The verdict on Ashes Cricket
Ashes Cricket scores 7.3 out of 10. That is a good game with a genuine structural advantage. The licence to the men’s and women’s 2017/2018 Ashes tours is not decoration — it is the reason to play this over any unlicensed cricket sim. The player creation tool feeding the cricket academy lets players build real players, publish them, and use them in the series or in personal careers. Those two things together are worth more than a roster update.
What holds it back is the indie line. Big Ant built the frame of a properly licensed Ashes game. The academy is the most interesting part of the package: it hands players the tools to create and publish real players and slot them into a series or a career. That is a real feature, not a marketing line.
The part worth watching is the academy. Ashes Cricket is the first Big Ant cricket game with the real teams in it. It is also the first one that gives players a publishing tool for real players. That combination is why 7.3 is the right number — a solid, licensed, extendable cricket game.
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