The Cricketer takes a first look at Cricket 19

LORD'S: The Cricketer was among the first to play the game at the preview event and spoke to those who made it all possible

The weeks immediately preceding release day are a nervous time for games developers and, even with 32 years of experience, Mike Merren is no exception.

"Every time you release a game there's that excitement and trepidation as well," he says. "It's your baby. You just hope that everybody loves it."

Merren is the development director at Big Ant Studios, the company tasked with producing Cricket 19 - the official game of the Ashes.

The latest of five cricket simulators to have been produced by Big Ant, it is due to go on sale on May 28, just prior to this summer’s World Cup and a matter of months before England and Australia do battle over five Tests.

When it is finally made available to the public, it will be as the result of a 15-month process involving as many as 40 developers, animators, testers, contributors and artists, all of whom fall under Merren’s direction.

"As soon as we’d finished the Ashes Cricket game at the end of 2017 we jumped onto this," the expat Englishman says during a pre-release sneak-peek day for select media at Lord's.

"It's a fair bit of work that goes into actually getting the game on the shelves.

"First of all, you have to make everything look as authentic as you can. You've got to do Lord’s in-game and make it look as close as possible.

"We've got all five of the Test grounds which are being used in this summer’s Ashes.

"Then you’ve got every player that’s involved.

"We've done close to 200 players because most of the Australian state side players are in there, as well as the Australian and England Test teams."

Cricket 19's impressive facial graphics are generated by high-tech photogrammetry software, which uses 17 individual cameras to take a single image of players' features.

Motion capture has been employed to make sure that shots in the game are as authentic as possible - Big Ant called Aussie international Glenn Maxwell into their studios to assist in the process - while Merren is particularly proud about the extent of the artificial intelligence deployed in the game which, for example, can develop strategies to target a user's weaknesses with bat or ball.

"When you think of cricket games over the past 20 years, AI is the hardest thing to get right," Merren says.

"You've got Test matches, you've got T20s, you've got ODIs… all these formats which has to have the AI working in the right way. It takes a lot of time to get right.

"Over five iterations of games now I think we're getting pretty close to getting it perfect."

Cricket and video games have an inconsistent relationship and Merren believes that is down to the sheer scope of creating a simulation of one of the more complex sports on the planet.

"History says it's one of the more difficult ones to do," he says. Even the rules; you can't have fielders here, you've got to make sure you can only have a certain number of bouncers per over in some formats and another number in other formats.

"All those things have to add up. We've made it really easy for ourselves because we've added another element to the game where you can tailor those rules to whatever you want - whether that be 10-ball overs or two runs for a no ball or how many challenges you get."

New features in Cricket 19 include a scenario mode, in which users can manually create situations from cricket history and upload them to a server for others to download.

In time, Merren expects a library of historical matches to be available, created and curated by gamers themselves.

But it is the visuals of Cricket 19 which he likes the most.

"We thought we did pretty well with Ashes but when you see what we’ve got now it's maybe not night and day but it's considerably jumped up," he says.

"What we've done with the replay systems - making it a little bit more like broadcast - is great and the AI we've got has upped the level."

Now it's time for Merren and his team to turn their baby over to the world.

Our coverage of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 is brought to you in association wiht Cricket 19, the official video game of the Ashes. Pre-order your copy now at Amazon.co.uk