THE HISTORY OF BRIAN LARA CRICKET
Jeremy Wellard has a way of thinking that was well-suited to making videogames. “I’ve got that mind a lot of [sports fans] seem to have where you just think about all the little intricacies of the sport that you play that translates really well to games,” he tells us. Jeremy made the first three Brian Lara Cricket games, in addition to working on their predecessors, Graham Gooch’s Test Cricket and World Class Cricket. “A lot of games developers – especially at that time – didn’t have this.”
It's bizarre to think that there was an era when knowing about sports and programming marked you out as unique now that the likes of FIFA have studios of developers and global fanbases. But in the Eighties and Nineties, sports gaming was a cottage industry with a smaller audience of players. Jeremy helped change this first with Brian Lara and then by working on EA’s Cricket series, showing the sport, like football, had global gaming appeal.
It all started because of a familial connection Jeremy had with Peter Calver who ran developer Supersoft. Peter was in a relationship with Jeremy’s mother, Pearl, after they met working in an accountancy firm, and the couple soon left this job for Peter’s computing business, which became later known as Audiogenic. Jeremy would playtest the firm’s games in the Eighties, which included Emlyn Hughes International Soccer and the 1988 action-adventurer Exile. This computing childhood was mixed with playing sport at high levels, including representing Hertfordshire in cricket as a teenager.
“AFTER I FINISHED UNIVERSITY IN 1993, PETER CALVER CAME AND KNOCKED ON MY DOOR AND JUST SAID, ‘DO YOU WANT TO COME AND WORK FULL-TIME? YOU KNOW IT’LL BE IDEAL. MAKE SPORTS GAMES – YOU PLAY A LOT OF SPORTS’ Jeremy Wella”
After I finished university in 1993, Peter Calver came and knocked on my door and just said, ‘Do you want to come and work full-time? You know it’ll be ideal. Make sports games – you play a lot of sports,’” recalls Jeremy.
Later on, he would help make two editions of FIFA for EA as well
