You are appointed manager of one of the twelve Full Member nations and run all three of its teams: Test, ODI and T20I. The season starts in October 2026 on a calendar built from the real fixture list wherever it has been published, including the remaining ODIs of the current Future Tours Programme, the 2026-27 Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the 2027 Ashes and the 2027 ODI World Cup in southern Africa. After that, tours are scheduled in each country's real home season, alongside the ICC events: the T20 World Cup, the ODI World Cup, the Champions Trophy, the World Test Championship final and the Asia Cup.
Every player carries a rating in each format he plays and one overall rating built from the formats he is still available for, so a batter who has retired from Tests and T20Is is judged on his ODI cricket alone. Players age, develop towards their potential, lose form, get injured and retire from one format at a time. Youngsters come through every season to replace them.
The board sets objectives each season and judges you on results against expectation, its objectives, the mood in the dressing room, the press and the budget. A poor run brings a warning, then a public vote of confidence with an ultimatum, then the sack, after which other boards may call. Between matches you pick squads and captains, hire a backroom staff, talk to players, keep or break promises, and handle the stories that come up across a season.
Every match can be played three ways: captain every over yourself on the same match screens as our Test, ODI and IPL games; manage it from the dressing room and step in at the big moments; or take an instant result. Your career is saved in your browser, and to your account when you are signed in.
Ball-by-ball records from Cricsheet (ODC-BY); birth dates from Wikipedia and Wikidata (CC BY-SA). See our data sources. Ratings are our own and are not endorsed by any player or by the ICC. Board members, coaches and journalists in the game are fictional.
Cricket Manager is a free cricket career simulator and management game: instead of one match or one season, you take charge of a whole national programme and stay in the job for as long as the board keeps you. The questions below cover what people ask before they start.
Prefer a franchise? Try the IPL auction game, or read how the match engine works.