I'm surprised this isn't known already..
From
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/features/tracing-the-origins-of-gaming-in-india-8-bit-cricket-sega-and-cloning-640129"To capitalise on this, Dugar and Handa invested heavily in their hardware business. In order to make it happen Dugar began getting all the necessities in order beginning with integration options. He says he personally oversaw every facet of the operation from the semi-conductor level to software for making the cartridges on which the game would be on.
There was also a question of coding the game itself. For this, he enlisted a now defunct company in Xi'an, China called Profine."It was very tough for me to teach Chinese people to make a cricket game," says Dugar. "I was 80-90 days in China for one-and-a-half years. Finally we came up with the product." While coding and manufacturing was taking place, Dugar also had to record audio clips, which was done in India. "The game had commentary every time you hit a four or a six," says Dugar. "This was recorded here."Cricket proved to be a huge success for Mitashi. To the point where Dugar sold it in other countries where the sport was popular.
"We sold 185,000 cartridges in this country in 2 months time at Rs. 225 a cartridge," he says. "I put my whole stake for cricket game, Rs. 3.5 crore for development as well as the raw material. I used my total capital on one product. The margin was okay but later the product gave me lot. At the time it was a huge amount of money, people were calling me crazy.""
This is not the same game as International Cricket, made by Beam Software in Australia.
In the same article, he references "Video", which was a bootleg nes game maker in India during the time -- this is them:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/noesis-industries-ltd/infocompanyhistory/companyid-7897.cms Here are some pics of their carts
https://postimg.org/image/mholn7pfr/ https://postimg.org/image/67yfkberr/He also brings up "Mega", which is referenced on the Famiclone article on the wiki.
There are 2 games on ebay ATM that have "cricket" on them:
http://www.ebay.in/itm/8-Bit-Video-Game-Cassette-Cartridge-9-In-1-International-Cricket-1942-Contra-2-/322605297831?hash=item4b1cc630a7:g:MoEAAOSwXtRZcg2O and
http://www.ebay.in/itm/8-Bit-Video-Game-Cassette-Cartridge-22-In-1-Cricket-2008-Sonic-6-long-jump-/322607428010?hash=item4b1ce6b1aa:g:We0AAOSwpIxZc3JCI assume they're the same game, despite the games having different names. I'm going to try and purchase the first one; hopefully the seller will ship to Australia.
From the same article:
"In 1997 we thought of doing our own brand" and ""The success of Brian Lara Cricket and Sega was the inspiration," says Dugar. "
He is likely referencing this game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Lara_Cricket which came out in 1995.
From
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Game-for-success/articleshow/9628599.cms"In 1999, there came a turning point when Dugar and Gada decided to launch their own electronic gaming consoles at low prices to increase penetration. And thus was born Mitashi, which in Japanese means 'to watch'. They imported low-priced consoles from China. They also rolled out games like Contra, Mario, Roadfighter and Pooyan played on an 8-bit cartridge. Sales were nothing to write home about.
Mitashi's big break came when they used their in-house R&D centre in Bhiwandi on the outskirts of Mumbai to develop a cricket game. That product, Dugar says, became an instant hit and sold one million pieces. In 2006, they launched virtual gaming like boxing, tennis and ping-pong, perhaps the first in the country to launch such interactive games. "
So all combined:
"I was 80-90 days in China for one-and-a-half years. Finally we came up with the product."
"In 1999, there came a turning point when Dugar and Gada decided to launch their own electronic gaming consoles"
"Mitashi's big break came when they used their in-house R&D centre in Bhiwandi on the outskirts of Mumbai to develop a cricket game. "
This game probably came out in 1999 or 2000. I'll contact the men in this article and ask them about exactly when it was made.
Does anybody know what company "Profine" is?
I've found some references online to the game, but nothing like a dump or any info:
https://www.spriters-resource.com/nes/internationalcricketbootleg/sheet/89714/https://famicloneblog.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/the-power-joy-ks-2523b/http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=141555 (he says it''s for the 16bit sega but he is wrong)
http://s4.zetaboards.com/PGC_Forums?topic=8143608/2/#post8061513 - "there was a Famicom port of the Mega Drive version of that game listed on Famicom no Tobira (which seems to have disappeared unfortunately) called International Cricket 2000, or something like "Brain Lara Crieket" on the label. which had baseball players on it. naturally. for the longest time I ignored it because I assumed it was just a hack of some licensed cricket game or other, but it actually isn't." ---- If taizou is reading this, "Lara" was indeed a famiclone from India:
https://i.imgur.com/GoTMbVt.png
