Ea Sports - Cricket 2007 - Only By The Rain

One user, CricketGuru2007 , famously wrote: “I simulated 47 overs of a tense Ashes finale. Then came the rain. I made tea. I ate dinner. I slept. Woke up. Still raining. My PlayStation 2 was warm. My soul was cold. EA Sports… it’s not in the game. It’s in the rain.” The phrase “Only By THE RAIN” became a meme. It was shorthand for any match that ended not by victory or defeat, but by the game’s own meteorological madness. Fans edited Wikipedia pages. Someone made a short film. A metal band in Sheffield wrote a song called Duckworth-Lewis of the Damned . EA never officially patched the glitch. By 2008, the company had lost the official cricket license, and the series died. But Cricket 2007 lived on—not as a good game, but as a ritual .

Speedrunners now compete in the “Rain%” category: starting a match and triggering the infinite rain loop as fast as possible. The world record is 4 minutes, 12 seconds (achieved by bowling 16 wides to accelerate the over rate, then deliberately bowling no-balls to manipulate the innings length). EA Sports CRICKET 2007 - Only By THE RAIN

No restart. No resumption. No menu. Just an infinite loop of stadium ambience—the distant hum of floodlights, the rustle of a wet outfield, and the ghostly sound of rain that never stopped. You could leave the console on for hours. Days, even. The rain would still fall. The players would never return. One user, CricketGuru2007 , famously wrote: “I simulated

Here’s what would happen: You’d be playing a Test match. Maybe you were 250/4, chasing 350. The sky would darken. The umpires would confer. Then the screen would flash: I ate dinner

And then… nothing.

But here’s the kicker: The game didn’t crash. It simply waited . Forever. “Only By THE RAIN” Frustrated players began sharing their stories on forums like PlanetCricket.net. Someone discovered the trigger: rain delays had a random chance of entering an infinite loop if the match was in its final innings and the target was within 50 runs. The game’s logic couldn’t decide whether to call off the match or resume play—so it froze in existential indecision.

Just don’t forget your umbrella.