At its most scintillating, cricket is a challenge of patience and nerves. The batter waits and waits, only to compress years of technique, judgement, critical thinking and agility into a fraction of a second. The ball passes and the batter spends the next minute absorbed in contemplation, replaying the ball, his stroke, pondering the movement off the pitch, re-calculating the threat posed while battling their own demons of self-doubt.

It's this combination of fear, technical ability and minutia shrunk into a second that digital translations of cricket have never been able to capture. For all their computational prowess, ability to handle the multiple algorithms determining small details like the variable bounce of a pitch, the aloofness of the English weather, or even something as fundamental as giving the red cherry a proper sense of gravity, developers have never been able to use the power of computers to imbue cricket games with any authenticity.

Don Bradman Cricket 14, the latest title from Big Ant Studios down in Melbourne, the closest any Australian city will come to mirroring the volatility of the London skies, achieves precisely that quality. Absent from the last two decades, Don Bradman recreates a sport where boundaries are infrequent, perfect line and length a journey rather than a matter of course, pitches and grounds have a sense of character and the AI bowls and bats in a perfectly contemporary manner.

When you consider how heavily the odds were against Big Ant, it truly is a triumph. A small studio without the blessing of even its local cricket board, an organisation that put its weight behind a rival product so riddled with bugs and incompetence it was pulled from Steam only days after release. And yet, with no official licenses, no support from a major multinational publisher, no additional funding through Kickstarter or the flavour of the month that is Early Access and the ignominy of missing not one but two release dates - DBC 14 was originally meant for release alongside last year's Ashes series, then the T20 World Cup in March - the resulting finish is an unqualified success.

The first, and smartest, change lies in a tweak to the established hierarchy. Rather than use the traditional bowling marker, balls are delivered through a combination of the left and right analogue sticks. Button prior to the delivery determines the general length, while timed inputs dictate the overall direction, speed or spin and the specific landing point more precisely. Fast bowlers can also determine their width on the popping crease, although this won't be noticed until the bowler completes his run-up, allowing for some excellent sleight of hand in multiplayer matches.

Batting is a harmony of inputs, with the left stick controlling the batsman's foot placement and the right stick determining the direction of the shot. Triggers can be applied for defensive, lofted and more ambitious shots, including sweeps and over-the-keeper chips, although the much loved slog sweep over midwicket is sadly absent. It's unfortunate considering the AI's fondness for sending its spinners around-the-wicket, but, with the advent of digital distribution, an oversight that will hopefully be rectified in the near future.

But for such an accomplished reworking of the basics, Big Ant's most grievous crime is a curious lack of accessibility. An in-game tutorial explains the fundamentals competently enough and the practice nets are sufficient for ironing out your technique. Once a match has begun, however, there are no in-game prompts indicating the different types of deliveries. It's the kind of understandable oversight that can happen from a studio without a massive tranche of resources to deploy on QA, but it's also a fix that, with community help, could and should be easily implemented.

The wider online cricketing fraternity has already made its influence known in DBC 14; the first thing you see on reaching the menu screen, after installing, is a prompt to replace the stock, Big Ant-created teams, with the most popular user creations. It's a remarkably convenient way to get around the lack of licensing. It's not the first, of course - cricket games have allowed user-created kits, players, attributes, uniforms and even stadiums and billboards in the past - but the sheer ease is refreshing.

Facing a line-up that echoes modern day sides, as opposed to an alphabet soup XI, adds a degree of authenticity to the proceedings. But the most realistic, if not in raw physics then in spirit, flavour is the career mode, twenty years of struggle and toil through your chosen state competition, through to selection for the national team and foreign domestic leagues.

As your form improves with bat and ball - or as a wicketkeeper, for the true romantics - your prospects for moving up in the world improve markedly. At the start of the season, and as the Australian T20 and foreign leagues kick off, you'll be offered a set of contracts from teams desperate for your unpolished, youthful ways. That raw talent requires a lot of refinement initially though, particularly as a batsman, so a good deal of discipline is required to build an innings of stature.

The AI responds convincingly during an innings, moving the field to capitalise on your shot selection and attacking the gaps where appropriate. I was miffed at the inability of batsmen to put my part-time off-breaks away more, but the performances often balanced out, with a man of the match spell followed up with a wicket-less trashing.

The only major repeating quirk was a propensity to double up in the field, placing a mid on in front of a man at long on. Sometimes the AI did this twice, essentially wasting two fielders, opening up gaps square of the wicket. It's nice if you're struggling for runs, although for the sake of an honest match it doesn't occur too frequently.

This small quirk aside, DBC 14 offers a rewarding but frustratingly-tense brand of cricket. It's fortunate that the on-field action is so satisfying, given the wide array of facts and figures sprinkled throughout most cricket titles that Big Ant have opted to exclude.

Some exclusions are actually sensible. The removal of a fielding radar, instead forcing players to review the field through the eyes of the batsman, is a welcome addition to the scrap heap of legacy mechanics that have bogged virtual cricket for decades. But the absence of some of the statistics, like run rate and Manhattan graphs, detailed innings breakdowns and partnership comparisons would be a nice addition for a sequel or a future content patch.

The presentation is competent, although that praise requires strict qualification. As you'd expect for a small studio, the random, no-name commentators, are dull and repetitive after a few lines. The in-game music is equally dire and muting both upon installation, replacing their generic prattle with the more considered banter of the BBC Test Match Special podcasts or anything from Cricinfo, should be considered a necessity.

Besides that, the sound of stumps clattering to the ground, a six off the middle of the bat or the bowler screaming for a throw from the deep, is perfectly reasonable. The visuals are serviceable despite the textures of the stadium and the outfield being rather one-dimensional. The pitch itself, the batters, bowlers and fielders are pleasant, although a bat through the ground or a keeper walking through an opener happens from time to time.

Even the BARS - Big Ant Review System, a recreation of ICC's DRS system, complete with Big Ant's own version of Hawkeye - adds a refreshing modern touch to the sport, although genuine shockers that require overturning are far and few between.

Tours, tournaments and casual matches are also on offer for those more interested in controlling an entire team and there's always online play, complete with an automated search function. The online search doesn't appear to discriminate based on region, however, and my experience was spotty at best, with a couple of matches jilted and stuttering, before disconnecting completely. Others against Australian opponents were lag free, although a few bugs not witnessed elsewhere disturbed the experience.

In the end, the greatest compliment I can bestow goes back to that elusive authenticity. More so than any other game I can remember playing, including the highly-rated Cricket 97 almost two decades ago, a match of Don Bradman Cricket 14 plays out like cricket should.

For a small team, having endured a few months' delay, depicting a sport unlikely to ever gain mass appeal among gamers, Big Ant must surely be proud. There are flaws, but none that should interfere in the minds of any cricket aficionado.

Rating: 8/10

Don Bradman Cricket 14 is available now for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Alex Walker is the regular gaming columnist for ABC Tech + Games. You can follow him on Twitter at @thedippaeffect.