End of day one:
I batted out my innings (England). I was a little too positive and paid the price in the end, mostly with back foot drives getting edged through to the slips. With Strauss I stuck to mostly playing the cut and driving off of Hauritz, which brought rewards as seen in the screenshot. Pietersen, Colllingwood and Prior were all caught in the slips. With Anderson and Broad I went back to just nudging it around and scored runs with relative ease.
As for the bowling, well frustrating and then a huge amount of joy.
Watson was cruising along, scoring at a decent rate with Katich just sticking around, neither looking like getting out. On comes Swann, in his fourth or fifth over, having looked fairly innocuous, rips one into Watson, he's on the back foot and the ball hits the pad bang in front! Talk about an awesome feeling, I was literally punching the air. :laugh
After that, Ponting came in and played with some freedom, reaching 27 not out by the end of the day.
No sign of suicidal runs from the AI. I'm so pleased the spinner is now a genuine option. One irritation that is still there from the original game is the way the AI uses over and round the wicket tactics. Far too much of right handed bowlers bowling round the wicket to right handed batsmen. Same goes for left handers bowlers to lefty batsmen.
I can say that day has been one of the most satisfying I can remember playing any cricket game, ever. From that first ball bowled by Johnson to the Watson lbw dismissal.
It is possible to hit sixes with "normal" timing. I did so with Strauss a couple of times, then with Swann and Anderson. Each time the boundary was cleared comfortably, although Anderson's six did go over the shortest boundary at Cardiff. I can see how you would get high run rates, but you would simply have to lose wickets at some stage. I don't see how you'd be able to go at 20 rpo all the time with the patch on
hard, not at the moment at least.
Onto edges. Edges do carry, but every edge I've seen carry has been off of a back foot shot. The couple of front foot edges I've seen from the AI didn't get near to carrying. This so far looks the same as the original game, unless I've just been unlucky.
On top of everything else, the actual performance of the game appears to be loads better. I can now run at 1440x900 (max res. for my monitor) with everything turned up and it looks stunning.
Whilst early in the testing of the patch, I would say this is the best cricket game around, by a distance.
Thanks for your continuing work to improve the game.
