In nearly every way, Big Ant is following on from most other cricket developers before when it comes to fielding. Batting and bowling are more important - no doubt. Fielding though is the poor relation, anyone can see that it doesn't seem to be considered an important aspect of gameplay. Understandable for a first game and maybe a second, but by the fourth game it needs to have improved more than it has. Fielding is where tension is built throughout a game, where bowling restriction is enforced. It needs to be a real part of the game. It's often slow, laboured, the dives seldom are adaquate to stop the ball near the boundary (the ball often has too much velocity into the deep outfield), the returns are still at times a total joke. It doesn't seem like there's any real hustle.
In my own opinion, Big Ant are just responding to what most people speak most of. Getting the batting right, the bowling right, fixing nicks and shot velocity, changing bowling mechanisms, wrong shots playing out to the input given, adding button-press methods, these sorts of things.
This games release has had so much improvement with batting and bowling (sure it's not perfect yet), that it does seem like more people are noticing fielding more. Hopefully a patch can be made at some time which has a major focus on it, makes it urgent, turns it into an exciting part of the gameplay.
