Owner, coach and captain: Hitwicket hands you all three jobs at once. It is a cricket manager game with a playable match engine inside it — you recruit the squad, train it, set the strategy, and then go out and chase the target yourself, ball by ball.

The squad is built at auction. Real-time auctions let you bid for players and assemble a team of your own 'cric-superstars', and training develops them between matches. On the field, batting and bowling are deliberately simplified — easy controls, brisk innings — but the decisions around them are the real game: who bowls the death overs, when to attack, and when to spend one of the match-turning superpowers the game lets you unleash.

Career, Championship and League modes structure the climb, with PvP battles, quests and rankings to measure it by, and fixtures that span short formats through to Test cricket. Global tournaments pit your club against players from everywhere, and Alliance Wars fold you into a team of fellow managers for club rivalries. When the connection drops, an offline mode keeps the cricket going without WiFi.

The developer puts its community at more than 18 million players, and the 4.4-star average on this listing suggests the mix works: lighter on the thumbs than a full simulation, heavier on the team-building. If you have ever watched a player auction and thought you could run the franchise better, this is that thought turned into a game.