Cricket is a really tricky sport to peg on certain demographics, with the age-old feeling that it appeals to toffs and old people really quite wide of the mark. It does appeal to toffs and old people, obviously, but at the same time plenty of normal beer-swilling folk like myself more than enjoy sitting down in front of a test match and absorbing a few hours of tense play (when you are an England fan every moment is tense, sadly), so a good cricket game is always going to sell well.

Codemasters have a bit of history when it comes to the leather and willow, with the original Brian Lara Cricket '99 having been a big success and a pretty fine effort too. Subsequent games haven't managed to carry the momentum onward and hence I went into Ashes 09 feeling a little like Ian Bell striding out to bat in full knowledge that things probably weren't going to go too well yet again, only to find that it's not quite as bad as the game's demo made things out to be. It's still not the cricket game I have been hoping for, sadly, but it ticks a few boxes.

Being the official Ashes game you have fully licensed England and Australian teams, although some of the likenesses are really quite awful. Andrew Flintoff, raging bear of England's middle order, looks like a potato wearing a cut-out Freddie face mask for example, whilst on the other hand likenesses for players such as Panesar and Jimmy Anderson look rather more suitable, leaving the whole thing rather hit-and-miss. Visually the game hardly pulls up any stumps (har har) either, with the most impressive detail seemingly saved for the field-side advertising boards and the players moving awkwardly around as if they were Jim Henson puppets.

Obviously the graphical side of things wouldn't be the be-all and end-all of the show should the actual gameplay hang together, and to be fair the batting side of Ashes 09 is not too bad. The game gives you the option of playing off the front or back foot depending on the length of delivery faced, and the resulting control offered is very welcome indeed. Likewise, you can now aim your shots a little better as a small radar will give you the general idea of where your direction will see the ball go, should you time your shot right. Obviously the lesser the quality of the batsman, the wider the radar segment will be.

Where it doesn't quite work is in the way the shots sometimes work and how comfortable it is, which for anyone who watches a bit off cricket at least will seem slightly out-of-place occasion. Bouncers that whizz past your nose and in real life would be completely criminal to go after can be dispatched to the boundary rope with relative ease, whilst bowlers often stick to a line and length too often and give you easy runs all over the place. In my first test match on the normal difficulty level I had almost hit 200 in the 30 overs before lunch, and was all out for 350 before tea.

Still, the batting remains fun for the most part as it's always enjoyable to build partnerships and head toward your centuries. The bowling, on the other hand, is an exercise in patience and is much the harder of the two disciplines. Even on the easier difficulties you will find yourself getting tonked around the outfield seemingly at random, making finding a good line and length a chore. Even full speed yorkers are easily dispatched to the rope more often than not, which is maddening.

As a result, the game ends up feeling like a case of who can slap the ball around the field the most when in bat to cover up for how difficult the bowling side is. It's none too authentic from a test match point of view, and chances are that folks with less patience may choose to bat out their innings and then completely skip the bowling part altogether when they find themselves getting slapped for four every other ball.

Then there are the bugs, glitches and plain oddness that occur as you play. Fielders often drop the easiest catches of all time, only to then pull off a string of impossible efforts. On occasion a fielder will stop the ball and pick it up, but instead of throwing it to either end for an easy run out will stand there admiring the scenery for a while. Worst of all was a situation where two Australian batsmen ended up at the same side of the batting crease after a confused run, upon which my bowler stood stock still, refusing to run either out. It was an incredibly silly situation, and one that really shouldn't be happening in a 2009-spec cricket game.

Outside of the two licensed teams and the full Ashes shebang you have the usual range of one-day matches and Twenty20 to play through in both single and tournament form, although anyone other than England and Australia have fake player names that can – thankfully – be changed. You can create your own custom player should you wish which is a nice feature, especially if like me you specialise as a number 3 batsman and can replace Ravi Bopara in the England squad (as I probably could in real life, given his form).

You also have a nice little training mode hosted by Ian 'Beef' Botham and Shane 'Fat' Warne, in which they will guide you through the basics of batting and bowling and give you a few scenarios to test yourself in. It certainly does a pretty decent job of teaching you the basics and a few more advanced techniques. There's a healthy bit of banter between the two as well, although I personally would have preferred an unlockable video of them fighting each other WITH SHARP STICKS.

Annnnnnnyhow, yeah, in general the game ticks a few boxes as said earlier, with the batting being fun if flawed and there being a decent online mode (although annoyingly disconnecting if you are losing carries no penalty), but there are far too many things wrong with Ashes 09 to make it a good game of cricket when taken as a whole. As cathartic as it may be to take England to an Ashes win given the shockingly poor events of last week at Headingly, once again you find yourself playing a game that's seemingly more content to bottom edge the ball onto its own stumps.