I wouldn't remove front foot shots from the game at all as it's a pretty common shot. I prefer your approach, i.e. let the appropriate shot animation kick in depending on height of the delivery. If the delivery is below chest height, it should play flick/glance else a pull shot. Same with Backfoot shots as well. Anything below chest height, it should play a glance else a pull/hook shot comes into play.
I played multiple odis between Aus and Eng teams and nearly every odi my RR was over 7-8 even though I wasn't trying to hit too much. As an example in one of the matches I (Aus) was 90/1 off 11 overs chasing Eng's simulated score of 321. Moeen Ali bowled 12th over and had a weird ring field with all the fielders in the circle. The next 6 deliveries went as follows: 4,2,4,4,4,3 and yet there was no change to the field. Most of the time AI had 3 random fielders out (3/4th way to the boundary) and only once they had 4 fielders out. I ended up chasing 321 in 32 overs with 4 wkts down and was playing on 'Legend' with Batting on 'Hard' with sliders/modifiers turned on (batting modifiers were set to 55 IMO).
AI fields definitely need some work as they were random and easy to score off most of the times. One major frustration was that occasionally AI did manage to select a decent field but changed it back to another weird one randomly despite me not managing to hit a boundary against that field. Some logic needs to be put in place for field selection instead of the fields changing randomly. At the very least keep the same field unless a boundary or two are hit.
