A new way to get around Play-Cricket: What's changed and why Follow
Play-Cricket.com has had its biggest navigation update in years. Whether you're visiting the public site or running your club's admin, things should feel simpler and much more logical. Here's what we did, why we did it, and what to expect.
Why we are making this change
We looked at how people actually use Play-Cricket and found three key things that needed fixing.
- Getting around took too long. Common tasks lik checking stats, updating your account or switching between sites needed loads of clicks. For those users who needed to get from the admin area of one club to the admin area of another it was even more frustrating.
- Mobile was hard work. Menus were stacked inside other menus, options found in unexpected places, and the visual presentation hadn't changed in a decade.
- Administering a club required arcane knowledge. This was our main target. The admin menu was built around how Play-Cricket's software is structured, not how a cricket club actually works. Features were scattered and hard to find unless you already knew where to look, which meant that knowledge was clustered in the expert minds of a few, rather than being self-intuitive for new volunteers.
These facts were backed up strongly by your feedback in our Cricket Playing Survey last year: When we asked you what would have the biggest impact on your experience of using Play-Cricket, you said the number 1 thing was making it easier to navigate.
We knew we needed to fix this, and we committed from the start to doing it in a way that properly took our users into account, and which reached them without suddenly disrupting the jobs they do on Play-Cricket week to week.
What's changed — the public site
For anyone visiting Play-Cricket.com, the header has been redesigned from the ground up.
- Common tasks take fewer steps. Journeys that used to require stepping through multiple page loads can now be completed in one interaction. View your stats for any club, manage availability, or jump straight into the admin area, all from one menu, and in the same browser tab.
- Mobile is completely redesigned. The mobile header has been fully restructured and simplified — no more menus within menus. Massively improved legibility and accessibility, and bigger targets for thumbs while out and about.
What's changed — the club admin area
This is the main reason we prioritised this work.
The old admin menu was organised around how our software was built — sections like "Day To Day", "Website Content", and "Setup". Labels that might mean something to a developer and which required years of experience to remember where to find things, but not much to a new volunteer just trying to get the game on. Using a digital system shouldn't require training or reading pages and pages of help guides - every menu should do exactly what it says on the tin, and that's what we are aiming for.
The new admin is built around how your club actually works:
| Section | What's in it |
| Fixtures & Results | Everything you need to manage your season |
| Club | Your club's core information, published content, and your public website |
| People | Members, committee & volunteers, emails — all in one place |
| Teams | Manage sections and squads with ease |
| Competitions | Registrations, objections, and suspensions |
| Reports | Access key data and metrics |
We've tried really hard to make sure all our labels are in plain English. Things are grouped by what you're doing, not by the system they belong to. Several settings that used to live in a random corner of the menu now live on the page they're actually relevant to; so if you're managing fixtures, the options you need are right there.
A few things to know
Some things have moved. If something feels like it's missing, it doesn't necessarily mean it's not there any more. Several features can now be accessed by buttons from the page they relate to, rather than from separate menu options. If you can't find what you need, our support team are always on hand to help, and we really want to hear about it if there are things you can't easily find.
Three features deliberately haven't made it into the new experience:
- The Members Forum. We looked at usage data before making this call. There were no new threads or posts in the first half of 2026, and only three across all of 2025, so now felt the right time to wrap this up and acknowledge that in today's internet, the conversation has moved on to club's social media platforms of choice.
- The Dashboard. The old dashboard was built to track targets the ECB used to set centrally. We no longer set those targets, as registration and scoring rates are growing strongly without any push from the ECB. This page was assessed to create more confusion than it was solving today, and your website statistics can still be accessed from the reports page.
- Clubhouse Bookings. This is a feature we need to build more information on before we can make an informed decision about it's future. We know 94 clubs used this in 2026, and will be able to offer those clubs a way to keep using it (by not upgrading to the new menu just yet). If this affects you, please tell us via the feedback link below — your input will directly shape whether and how we bring it back.
How we tested this and how we are rolling it out
We knew from the beginning we couldn't just build this in a vacuum and then switch it on. From October 2025 to February this year, we ran 9 rounds of user testing, engaging over 200 real users of the product in a variety of structured research exercises. Participants were recruited from right here in Play-Cricket, and the approach allowed us to run through many iterations of the menu to find the one that led real users to the right outcomes most often.
The results gave us confidence:
- 81% of respondents in prototype testing agreed the new design is a significant improvement
- Task discovery in the new menu almost doubled. This means that when given a task to complete, people were 2x more likely to find the right page for the task when presented with this new structure than the old one.*
- Consistent feedback across rounds: "more intuitive", "fewer menus and sub-menus is great", "improved language helped me find what I needed more quickly", "more straightforward than the current system"
*This is ultimately the reason we started this project, and this result was a huge validation of why we did this. In the old Play-Cricket, people were only able to find the right page for any given task around 3 out of ten times.
Gradual rollout - you choose when
Another critical part of our plan from the start was to ensure this change didn't turn up and completely disrupt people's workflow. We knew that change of this nature had to be an opt-in if it arrived during the season.
For now until the end of this season, the new navigation will be an opt-in experience only. It will then become the default for all users from October 2026 (but you will still be able to switch back), before the old experience is decommissioned in the lead up to next season.
This approach also means that we can get your feedback, and improve the new model, without it getting in your way. If you do try out the new navigation and find yourself switching back to the old, please do use the feedback button to tell us why! We will be keeping an eye on all incoming feedback and addressing anything we think could make the menus better.
You can switch between the 2 menus at any point in your Play-Cricket account settings.
What's coming next
The navigation is the first visible step in a wider overhaul of Play-Cricket for admins. While what you see in this update is a new menu, behind the scenes it brings a host of infrastructure and network changes that enable a broader overhaul of Play-Cricket over time. We know how essential it is to the game, and we are committed to transforming the experience for admins and volunteers moving forward.
Questions or feedback?
Something feel wrong? Can't find what you need? Want to ask a question?
Get in touch with our support team or leave feedback directly in Play-Cricket - surveys will pop up from time to time to ask how you're finding the new experience.