
If you aren't familiar with cricket, now's a good time to take a swing at it, with Google's help. The human-size tournament, which pits eight teams against each other in a limited game format, is now underway in England and Wales. "We kept the file size fly-sized, and the result is our smallest interactive Doodle ever - even snail networks can load it in seconds." "We know that cricket is loved worldwide, so we wanted to make sure our Doodle works for everyone, including those on slower mobile networks," Google said in an introduction to the doodle. It's also a reference to the network speeds on which Google's game can be played. Instead of people playing on the field, the batsman is a cricket and the fielders are snails - which may be a reflection of the game's speed of play. To celebrate the tournament, Google has produced a doodle that doubles as a cricket game, with a twist.


Yup, that distant cousin of baseball is in full swing too, as evidenced by the matches currently being played as part of the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy, an international tournament second in importance only to the Cricket World Cup. As the summer days warm up, it's time to grab the ol' bat and ball and head for the cricket field.
