You may be the one who is not very fond of cricket or the one who loves playing cricket but has wondered what is so interesting about mobile cricket games. Whoever you may be, this Google Doodle (a game actually) will put all that aside.
The 2017 ICC Champions Trophy commenced today at 3 pm IST at Kennington Oval, London and Google, like always, managed to do something out-of-the-box. As you land on the Google Chrome window or Google’s home page, you are greeted by a bat-holding little grasshopper swinging a ball and a play symbol that provokes you to see “what’s in there!”
As you click on the play button, a small screen pops up showing a cricket stadium filled with teeny-weeny colourful insects, a scoreboard on the far end, a team of snails fielding and two grasshoppers stationed at each end of the pitch. When you click on the yellow button, the game starts. The snail swings the ball and you are role-playing as the grasshopper who is the batsman (or should we say bats-insect)! You have to judge when the ball is close enough to hit and click anywhere on the screen to swirl the bat. The grasshoppers start running on their own when they see the opportunity. If you are able to score runs, the audience starts clapping and releases balloons with the number of runs you’ve scored.
The best part about the game is that the only way of getting out is getting bowled! There are no run outs or catch outs or the very dreaded LBWs. Another fun element is that there are no spins or Yorkers too! The only skill in this game is judgement. And if you do get bowled, the grasshopper turns into a duckling with a sad face, which is hilarious!
Google knows that cricket is loved worldwide, hence wanted to make sure that their Doodle works for everyone, including those on slower mobile networks. “We kept the file size fly-sized, and the result is our smallest interactive Doodle ever – even snail networks can load it in seconds.”
For the Doodle, engineering is done by Jacob Howcroft with Mark Ivey doing the additional engineering. Matt Cruickshank is the art director and Leon Hong is the additional sound designer. Project management and production were handled by Greg Capuano and Perla Campos.
Google wishes: “Whether you’re enjoying the tournament at a snail’s pace or bowling faster than the beat of a hummingbird’s wings, here’s hoping you hit it out of the park this summer!”
Here are samples of Google’s test animation and development designs:
