ICC Champions Trophy 2017: Google celebrates international tournament with addictive cricket game

There are some tricks that make the game easier to play

Google is commemorating the beginning of the ICC Champions Trophy in perhaps the most addictive way possible.

The international cricket tournament kicks off today and runs through the rest of June. The one day tournament features eight participants and the final is on 18 June.

But if you want to get into the spirit straight away then you can head to Google's Doodle and get playing. The game that makes up the Google homepage is a simple but fun game of cricket, played by clicking the mouse to swing the bat.

The game depicts crickets batting and snails fielding – a reference to the fact that Google has made the game so that it works on slow connections.

Google usually commemorates such events with static or animated doodles – but it has created such games in the past, usually for big events.

There seem to be some tricks to playing better in the game. Chief among them is to wait until late on to hit the ball: if you click too early then you'll get out, and hitting the ball later on seems to increase the chances of getting a six.

The real games from the tournament have kicked off already, with England playing Bangladesh at the oval.