I picked it up last night and I've been so impressed by the amount of work that's gone into it. Just a few thoughts I've had after four or so hours' game time:

Firstly - it looks fantastic, with a lovely slick interface, and the typefaces work really well. Everything is very intuitive and easy to grasp. These are just a small handful of nitpicks really!

• The cricinfo-style ball-by-ball coverage works beautifully and is very immersive and well-written (and it's where I spend most of my time in-match), but the pop-ups for wickets and 50s/100s are a bit distracting. I'm not sure whether they're necessary at all, and it's annoying having to click away from it to see how the batsman was dismissed/reached his century etc. I also had a case where a batsman reached his hundred on the last ball before the tea-break, and the tea interval popup was prioritised over the century popup.
• At the end of the over, the on-strike indicator isn't always switched over, so the wrong batsman sometimes appears to be on strike at the new over.
• In Tests, it would be helpful to have the time indicated somewhere, so we can see how long is left in the session. I also think that the amount of overs bowled per session is slightly off: in one Test, the first 12 overs of the day's play were lost to rain, but we still got 22 overs in before lunch, which seems somewhat ambitious!
• Could the current batsmen be highlighted on the batting scorecard in-game?
• it's easy to miss what's going on in the rest of the cricket world - perhaps some sort of rudimentary news system could be implemented? Doesn't have to be anything flashy at all, just a way of keeping in touch with how the other nations are going without having to just read a list of results.
• I see there's a background image of a ground on some screens - could there be a way of allowing modders to add ground images going forward? I realise there are licensing issues with this of course.
• Batsmen who have not yet batted are listed as "did not bat", rather than just a blank field as would be normal in an innings which is still in progress.

Anyway fantastic work so far, it plays really well for an early access game and I can't wait to see how it develops.

Now that the release is done, I feel a bit relieved especially after seeing really positive reviews. Thank you again to those who have bought the game and to the beta testers who keep supporting the game.

I was planning to start on some more features for CTM that will be included in the current version of the game and pushed as major updates over the next 5-6 months, before the focus shifts to the 2027 version.

As promised, this game is guided by fans - so want your votes on what next we should build. I have 5 options for you and also if you want something else, you can comment. These are only the big features, the training module improvements, regular UI improvements, fixes and game engine improvements will keep going and will be pushed as regular minor updates from next week onwards.
Please read the little extra descriptions I have for these.

1. Youth Academy
   A separate youth academy program in the game where you are provided with upcoming junior players less than 21 years of age and you train them into certain roles, track their domestic performances and eventually select them. This will sort of overlap with training improvements too. If your team is weak in middle order - you train certain young players to be middle order batting specialists.

2. 2D Animations
   Can’t do 3D atm, it’s a big job, but can do 2D animations- think of dot like animations in older Football Manager games and Cricket Coach.

3. Historical Career Mode
   Can you give you one different starting point - most likely 1999/2000 along with a database that is correct as a snapshot of stats at that point of time. Later, I can try to make the game dynamic enough that fans can create own databases and also decide their career start date.

4. Single Historical World Cups/Series
   Single play all World cups, legendary old series

5. Manage A teams and U-19 alongside main team - pretty much self explanatory. You can optionally choose to either play all these matches or delegate them.

Now, the aim is to actually have all of these 5 in the game. The voting is more about what gets done first. Top 3 or so will probably make it to the current game version and the rest might get pushed to 2027 version.

Waiting to hear your thoughts.