Play vs The Cricket Draft
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Play
Follow live cricket scores from Play-Cricket.com with detailed scorecards, ball-by-ball commentary, and match statistics. Access upcoming and completed matches, add events to your calendar, and share updates on social media.
- Live score tracking
- Detailed scorecards
- Ball-by-ball commentary
- Match statistics
- Calendar integration
- Social media sharing
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Play-Cricket Live is the easy way to keep up-to-date with live scored matches on Play-Cricket.com. Using Play-Cricket Live, you can access detailed scores for In Progress games being scored or streamed through Play-Cricket Scorer (and PCS Pro), or any upcoming and completed matches that have been submitted to Play-Cricket.com. Features: - Search, modify and follow your preferred clubs or leagues in the Play-Cricket Live app. - View live scores and results in detail, with full innings scorecards including batting, bowling, fielding and fall of wicket information. - View Manhattan graphs, score worms and ball-by-ball commentary for live matches. - Add upcoming matches to your device’s calendar. - Share scores on social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. - View daily match dashboard for all your favourite teams and competitions - Consume live streams and highlights from matches of your favourite teams
The Cricket Draft
Build your dream cricket squad for free and compete in live fantasy leagues. Test your knowledge of player stats and real-life performances to earn points and climb the leaderboards. Challenge friends and fans globally in various cricket competitions.
- Build a squad within a budget
- Earn points based on real-life player performance
- Manage squad with transfers
- Access player stats and live results
- Create and join public/private leagues
- Compete in various cricket competitions
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Get closer to the action this summer! The Cricket Draft is the UK's leading Fantasy Cricket Game. Build your squad for free and compete against friends and fans from around the world in the ultimate test of your cricketing knowledge! Create your account in just a few clicks and play in any of our live fantasy competitions, including the County Championship, Vitality Blast, Charlotte Edwards Cup, One Day Cup, Charlotte Edwards Cup, T20 World Cup and many more competitions from around the world. How The Cricket Draft Fantasy works: - BUILD YOUR SQUAD: Pick your squad of 15 players within your £100m budget. Choose from some of the biggest professional stars when designing your team - EARN FANTASY POINTS: Your selected players will earn you points based on their real-life performances in each gameweek - MANAGE THROUGH THE SEASON: As the competition goes on, you can manage your squad by making transfers or substitutions - ALL THE DATA AT YOUR FINGERTIPS: Help inform your selection decisions with in depth player performance stats and get real time updates on the unfolding events with live fixtures and results - TAKE ON FRIENDS IN LEAGUES: Join and create public or private leagues to play against your mates as well as fans from around the world. Do you have what it takes to come out on top? - ALWAYS FREE TO PLAY: The Cricket Draft Fantasy is always free to play! Join the Draft
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: The Cricket Draft at 82% against Play's 24%. The Cricket Draft also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.6) and update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 4 months). Play's advantage is ratings volume (27 vs 1) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 15.6). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
The Cricket Draft holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Play has 27 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 24% of Play's written reviews are positive against 82% of The Cricket Draft's.
Play ships an update every 4 months, The Cricket Draft every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 23, 2026 and July 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Play | The Cricket Draft |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (27 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 23.7% of reviews | 82.3% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 27 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 15.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 55 MB | 63 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 12+ |
| Developer | England and Wales Cricket Board Ltd | The Cricket Draft Ltd |
Customer experience
Play
The Cricket Draft
User reviews
Play
From 27 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Good for tracking grandson's team
- 👍 Good for keeping informed about local club
- 👍 Helps track progression
- 👍 Good to see stats
- 👍 Excellent app
Room to improve
- 🐛 Crashing frequently
- 🐛 Unreliable and temperamental
- 🐛 Cumbersome and difficult to navigate
- 🐛 Freezes often, especially during matches
- 🐛 Live scores not updating or showing
The Cricket Draft
From 1 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🌟 Best fantasy cricket app
- 👍 Easy to use and navigate
- 🤖 Constantly improving with new features
- 🏏 Enhances enjoyment of domestic cricket
- 💬 Responsive and supportive developers
Room to improve
- 🐛 Occasional bugs and crashes
- ⏱️ Slow loading times and performance issues
- 🤷♂️ Difficulty accessing certain features or team management
Bugs and requests
Play
Reported bugs
104 issues- Some matches don’t show up properly
- App keeps crashing
- App won’t refresh
- App defaults to a season from three years ago
- Needs delegating and reinstalling
Show 99 moreShow fewer
- Fickle whether it shows live scoring or streaming
- Refreshing and reopening sometimes works, not always
- Viewing player stats requires extra sign-in
- Not updated live
- Freezes within 9 overs
- Unable to view scorecards
- Information lost off the bottom of the screen on iPhone 13
- Score on summary screen never matches detail
- Frequent SSL errors
- Almost impossible to follow a match from start to finish
- Clitchy
- No live data
- App stops working most weeks
- App immediately refreshes fixtures updated via website
- Rarely works properly on a Saturday afternoon
- Keeps crashing on Saturdays
- Keeps freezing
- Irritating when refresh requires going back to tab
- Match Stream tab is always blank
- Issue with iPhone 15, unable to see detail score or set-up
- Fails to load pages
- Fails to show scores on summary page
- Temperamental, often can’t see scorecards
- Cannot see anything beyond dashboard on Saturday
- Rarely works
- Games don’t appear to be working
- Live score disappears halfway through an innings
- Doesn’t recognise registration/email/password
- App doesn’t function properly
- Slow and unreliable, especially on Saturday
- Cannot access scoreboards
- Dashboard is way behind detail
- Cannot log in
- Nightmare to navigate
- Login system requires frequent sign-in
- Ball by ball still not working
- Often goes offline when following a game
- Never lets me view live games
- Always crashing
- Scroll down to rules, link disappears behind footer banner
- Live not working
- Always slow to update scores
- Glitchy
- Doesn't display correct score half the time
- Multiple sign-ins for stats
- Cannot log in
- Network errors
- Doesn't update quickly
- Impossible to find match details
- Defaults to first game of season
- Not accessible using speech on iPhone
- Constantly no scorecard data
- Ball by ball says innings not started but summary gives current score
- Tricky to navigate
- Major redesign is a disaster
- Cannot find anything of use
- App stops working most weeks
- Fixtures not refreshing
- App fails to cope on Saturdays
- Keeps freezing
- Irritating when refresh requires going back to tab
- Match Stream tab is always blank
- Issue with iPhone 15, unable to see detail score or set-up
- Fails to load pages
- Fails to show scores on summary page
- Temperamental, often can’t see scorecards
- Cannot see anything beyond dashboard on Saturday
- Rarely works
- Games don’t appear to be working
- Live score disappears halfway through an innings
- Doesn’t recognise registration/email/password
- App doesn’t function properly
- Slow and unreliable, especially on Saturday
- Cannot access scoreboards
- Dashboard is way behind detail
- Cannot log in
- Nightmare to navigate
- Login system requires frequent sign-in
- Ball by ball still not working
- Often goes offline when following a game
- Never lets me view live games
- Always crashing
- Scroll down to rules, link disappears behind footer banner
- Live not working
- Always slow to update scores
- Glitchy
- Doesn't display correct score half the time
- Multiple sign-ins for stats
- Cannot log in
- Network errors
- Doesn't update quickly
- Impossible to find match details
- Defaults to first game of season
- Not accessible using speech on iPhone
- Constantly no scorecard data
- Ball by ball says innings not started but summary gives current score
- Tricky to navigate
- Major redesign is a disaster
- Cannot find anything of use
Requested features
23 requests- Live activity for chosen match on Watch, phone, and CarPlay
- Improvement in Play Cricket for grassroots cricket
- Option to select a favorite for the season
- Easier way to view leagues and personal statistics
- Make live scoring more accessible
Show 18 moreShow fewer
- Allow customisation to view matches in other leagues/age groups
- Better loading of ball-by-ball updates
- More ways to click on scorecards and teams
- Ability to link accounts or do more on the app instead of directing to website
- Make app more user-friendly
- Improve navigation and usability
- Make it easier to find information
- Allow viewing team sheets on the app
- Record junior matches live on the app
- Fix login system to remember users
- Improve stability and user-friendliness between app and web version
- Make it easier to change teams and update players
- Improve accessibility for speech on iPhone
- Make it easier to find individual matches
- Allow removal of favorites
- Make it easier to find specific matches
- Improve live score updates
- Make match suspension due to rain clearer
The Cricket Draft
Reported bugs
3 issues- Login screen freezes
- Inability to save team selections
- Inconsistent scoring and points display
Requested features
3 requests- Dark mode option
- Improved player availability tracking
- Enhanced league and competition management
In-app purchases
Play
No in-app purchases
The Cricket Draft
No in-app purchases
