Ok folks, I found out something rather interesting while trying to figure out how to trigger the back-foot glance shot. This may provide Big Ant more insight into the issue and may also help with other related concerns (line bowled by AI to left handers) listed in the Observations section below.
My settings:
I have the AI set at Legend difficulty with Bowling Quality bumped up to 55 from the default 50. And for Batting I'm using a custom difficulty based off of Medium difficulty level, and am using Classic control scheme. The games were played at Lord's and the pitch was Green/Dry and Pitch Hardness set to Medium.
Teams and Matches:
I played a series of odis against OOB England team (i.e. AI Bowling team is England) with various OOB teams (Aus, SA, Ind).
Observations:
1. It is infinitely easier to play a back-foot glance with a left-hander than a right-hander. In fact all of the back-foot glances I was able to play were with a user controlled left handed batsmen.
2. The way to trigger the shot is to face off against a right handed pacer bowling right handed over the wicket. Whenever the pacer bowled a short delivery (red circled one), I played a back foot shot with left stick pulled back and right stick directed towards fine leg. I found out that quite often the ball pitched outside the left hander's leg stump resulted in a back-foot glance.
3. Now this is the concerning part. I started noticing that right handed bowlers bowled almost every delivery on or outside the left hander's leg stump. Occasionally they might bowl an odd delivery on the stumps but there was hardly a delivery bowled in the channel outside off to a left hander by a right handed pacer from over the wicket. It was as if the right handed pacers were bowling in the channel to the right handers and didn't factor in that they were bowling to left handed batsmen and change their lines accordingly.
4. The right handed pacers bowled on or outside off to left handers when they started bowling round the stumps. And when they did that, the back-foot shots against short pitched deliveries (red circled ones) ended up being pull/hook stumps instead of the glance.
5. Maybe that's why it's difficult for right handers to play a back-foot glance as they come up against right handed pacers who bowl outside off to them and they barely get a short pitched delivery pitching outside leg stump. Maybe if a pacer bowls short pitched deliveries from round the stumps pitching outside the leg, they would be able to play back foot glances as well.
In summary, there are two items for Big Ant to investigate and hopefully address:
Item 1: Allow the back-foot glance shot to be triggered to deliveries other than those pitched outside leg stump. Maybe trigger the animation based on height of the delivery (chest height or lower) instead of just the line of the delivery.
Item 2: Tweak the right handed pacers so they bowl a better line to left handers from over the wicket. All the left handers I played with were able to milk the bowling and able to score easily as the deliveries were on or outside leg stumps most of the time.
I would love for others (
@WealeyH ,
@blockerdave ,
@Dutch ,
@Rhone ,
@Llewelynf etc.) to try it out (maybe bat on Medium difficulty as a left hander against right handed pacers) and see whether everyone is getting similar results and there's a pattern. If these findings are consistent for everyone, it should make things easier for Big Ant to fix. I'm very curious to see what results others get.