5 dumb things: Unlicensed player names on Brian Lara Cricket 05 and 07
A sports game failing to secure the official licensing rights for player names is typically seen as a bad thing on the face of it. While most names conjured up by the developers are pretty similar to the original, some are so bizarrely abstract that they become an inherent part of how the game is remembered
1) Jason Guisseppi
After Brett Leap and Glenn MacGrith have bowled their inevitably devastating opening spells, this reliable seamer — who apparently turned a little Italian in the renaming process — would come on to continue the pressure.
He’s not the only Gillespie to cop a bit of rough treatment from the Brian Lara series as former Kiwi bowler Mark will know. Codemasters must have been watching highlights of Euro 96 when they inexplicably swapped his last name for that of England’s most naturally-gifted footballer Paul Gascoigne.
2) Ian Berwick
Unfortunately the man with the nicest cover drive in international cricket received a name that not only failed to do that shot justice but also managed to make him nearly impossible to identify.
It is in fact — at least to the best of The Frog’s knowledge — Ian Bell, a batsman discarded far too early by England. Berwick is one of many classic names from this mid-2000s period including Marcus Triscathack, Andrew Flantiff, Graeme Thrip, Mark Batch and Matthew Higgart — that’s just five but the whole squad has been butchered pretty badly.
3) Niall O’Banion and Kevin O’Boyle
It’s not often you see two brothers with different last names but Codemasters made the brave choice to give the two O’Brien brothers precisely that. There’s not exactly a shortage of O’Briens in Ireland so there is a chance Codemasters weren’t aware they were even brothers.
O’Banion and O’Boyle are joined in Ireland’s iconic 2007 squad by opener Will Portishead — perhaps the developer was a big fan of the English trip-hop band? — and David Laggan-Stuart who’s seamer David Langford-Smith in real life. Nothing particularly funny about that one but he does randomly bowl 97mph in the game which is weird.
4) Eric Gilchurch
Even though Codemasters’ thought process when dishing out fake names seem nonsensical in most cases, occasionally they pull out something obscure yet clever with only cricket losers getting what it’s all about.
Aussie keeper Adam Gilchrist got the nickname ‘Churchy’ because a young autograph hunter mistakenly called him Eric Gilchurch, hence the in-game name. Gilchurch evidently took up all the mental effort for Codemasters as Michael Clock and Michael Huscarl have been plucked right out their arses — unless the developers are familiar with the Huscarl, the name given to Anglo-Saxon troops who directly defended their king. You never know.
5) Daryl Toffee and Kyle Meals
Daryl Tuffey is pretty iconic already for the wrong reasons in the cricket world as — despite averaging a thoroughly decent 32 in Test and ODI cricket — he once bowled an over where he had conceded 15 runs after bowling just a single legitimate delivery. Being named after a hard confection hasn’t helped his cause at all.
Tuffey would have shared the field with Kyle Mills numerous times throughout the mid-2000s, a bowler whose fake name sounds surprisingly similar to how a Kiwi might say Mills. Probably best not to give Codemasters any kudos for that as chances are this was all by accident rather than design.
