While bowling generally becomes a boring chore, batting is mostly a smash fest. These factors, combined with the emphasis on the World Cup format (like it being the only mode with proper player licences) essentially make the game fairly one-dimensional. It is equally easy to bowl tightly with little need for much variation once you've been playing a while. While as you lose wickets it does become trickier to get the ball away, in most situations the damage is already done by then. Even on the harder settings it becomes possible with a minimum of practice to hit huge amounts of boundaries with most batsmen from the better teams. Starting out there is a thorough, if pretty slow and dry, tutorial section to steer you through the gameplay basics - exactly the kind of thing that you have to expect from a niche sport title - but when it comes to it, the entry level is set very low and the game is really too easy.
As such, the developers of BLIC 2007 made the decision to design the look and feel of the game with an obvious emphasis on limited-overs cricket. At the time, Test cricket was seriously on the decline, but the hopes were that the one-day and especially 20/20 formats would regenerate the game and open it up to new fan bases. However, asis often the way, many hardcore fans felt BLIC 2007 was somewhat hamstrung by the closeness of its association with the ICC World Cup. With sports like cricket, releases that tie in to major tournaments are almost always going to be the only profitable strategy.
Released just over two years ago, the appearance of BLIC 2007 coincided with the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup held in the West Indies - cue lots of brightly coloured menus and a cringy reggae soundtrack. Looking back at BLIC 2007 and listening to the latest news from Codemasters gives me lots of hope for the upcoming Ashes 2009 game.