EA must have been looking at the cricket as a bit of a goldmine. With the resurgence of interest in the sport in the UK, along with the Ashes series, it's thus unsurprising that they held back the release of Cricket 07 to tie in with England's tour down under.

Oops.

Anyway, we'd best crack on. The game itself hasn't actually moved on too much since we last saw it, although there are a couple of new ideas in there. But the gist remains the same: you can take on a national or a county side and either play a series, a match, the practice nets or a season.

If you've got the patience for the latter, you have our admiration, because for our money it all becomes tedious long before the end of the second match. While in the past we've certainly enjoyed the batting side of EA's Cricket games, the bowling in particular soon becomes predictable and laborious. And not much has changed there for this new version.

What has changed is the control method. The new introduction this time round is the century stick, which assumes you're playing the game with a gamepad. If you are, then the right-hand analogue stick now controls the direction in which you play your shot. It's quite intuitive, too, and while it relies on good timing to perform a particularly impressive stroke, it's a perfectly functional way of playing the game.

The keyboard is still tolerable for batting, too, so it's not much loss either way. You can customise further controls for the left stick if you want to get particularly advanced, and the shoulder buttons too have a part to play, but there's really not much you need to know to get to grips with this side of things.

The bowling isn't much fun, though. It involves a combination of stopping a meter at the appropriate point, aiming, and selecting the kind of ball you want to bowl. One or two other options offer you a very small variance on your deliveries, but not enough to matter too much, and not enough for you to really care about.

You then need to factor in the computer-controlled opponents, with Cricket 07 showing a distinctly unsubtle variance in difficulty settings. On the easiest it's very easy, while on the hard it's brutally tricky, to the point of removing the fun. There's little sign of much balance in between, either.

Lavishly adorned with all the official paraphernalia you expect of an EA Sports release, the problem with Cricket 07 is very familiar. There's fun to be had in the early days by slogging boundaries, until it comes to the point where you realise that that's about as good as it gets. And - in spite of the improvement in controls and the better graphics - there's nothing here that would have us tempted to fork out another £30 over the last one. So we didn't.

A tame, temporarily interesting cricket game, but with each release it's a franchise that's getting less and less diverting. Recent events in Australia aren't likely to help sales, either.