As fans of the Minden Cricket board game game will have seen over the past few months, the 10th anniversary of the 5th Edition of the perennially popular statistical cricket board game has coincided with a flurry of product development.

We have recently completed our goal of publishing all players who have played 5 Tests or more from 1877 to the present day. This provides over 1800 Advanced Player cards for players of the game.

We are now focussing on further products and product development, and as such I thought it worthwhile publishing a loose roadmap of what is in train.

The usual disclaimer exists of there being no particular time frame to any of these as some are a mere glint in the eye of the development team.

That said, here’s what we are thinking:

  • Release of a “mid-point” update to the 2020 Career Set in order to cover all Tests played between August 2020 and the start of the English summer (taking into account the currenly live English v India series)
  • Completion of the final pre-1920s Test Players to ensure all Test Match players are available – now complete, 02/21
  • The development of new “Extras” sets. These are collections of players who have not played the required 5 Tests to qualify for the Career Sets. They will be tweaked based on available data and will be provided as an option for those who want to have a complete set of Players
  • Complete the long planned World Series Cricket set, complete with the Cavaliers Tour
  • Finalise two in development Tour Pack developments – the 1954 Pakistan Tour of England and the 1960/61 West Indies Tour of Australia. Both these series provided milestones in cricket with the first victory by Pakistan over England and the famous Tied Test in Brisbane between the West Indies and Australia
  • Release of Basic Ratings for all sets currently available (these will be made free and continually updated)
  • Publication of a version of the Excel Helper which includes key statistics for the Advanced Game of all Player Cards from 1877 onwards
  • More Classic Series, focussing nations other than Australia and England (although they will feature too)
  • More Ashes Series

And some wishful thinking

I am also looking at developing a one off pack of Players using their statistics when bowling and batting to Left and Right handers, as well as statistics for how they perform Home and Away. This is purely experimental so will most likely be made available free to owners of the game to test them out before committing to more complete sets.

Finally, we are still looking at developing a Twenty20 version of the game but this will largely be a new system and new product. Gary and I are continuing to talk about it, but for now it remains in the realms of “we really should finish that game we’ve been talking about for so long…”

I hope everyone is enjoying the new card sets and as ever, please send me feedback either by commenting below, via the Contact Us form or over on the Delphi Forums. It’s always great to hear from players of the game.