Have just finished my first session looking at the game on PS4. A lot to cover really. First of all, I do think Big Ant have made an effort to make this game a substantial step forward over Cricket '19. However, they definitely have not achieved this on release upto now.
I started up and played through the tutorial (ridiculous that it asks for your play style Arcade or Pro and then proceeds to make you play the tutorial in Arcade???). Things seemed okay. Then it asked if I wanted to play an introductory game (5/5) so I did. The game froze/crashed halfway through the first innings.
Then I went into the actual game, went to set up a 10 over custom game and then it crashed again out to PS4 crash report menu before I could even get out of set-up.
I reloaded the game and then managed to play that 10 over game. Here are some things I noted:
The Good
I found the lighting and graphics to be a big improvement.
I liked the new UI for the most part.
The batsmen appear to be able to make more use of the crease.
The new runout mechanic seems to have potential if implemented more relevantly.
Bowling felt just as good but in some way slightly different to C'19 (perhaps more swing possible - was using Dukes ball).
The Bad
The Batsmen were indeed slow to react.
The fielders were dropping catches right in centre of the green circle.
The fielders were not making an effort on deliveries passing close by them.
The bowling reticles for pace, spin and spin revolution are all VERY thin making it hard to see them when you push down/then up.
The timing of the bowling reticles seems slightly out. It felt like I was pushing during the red zone and was getting perfect and ideal releases.
The likenesses of particularly NZ and also West Indies and Ireland were outstandingly bad. Ross Taylor looked like he was 15yrs old or something and others looked nothing like themselves including Kane Williamson!
When crowd or cutscenes are shown, the screen seems to judder or flicker.
The new runout mechanic is often displayed pointlessly when no real chance exists.
Overall the fielders and stump guards were still marginally slow to react with bails.
Player models are slightly weirdly too thin looking and it appears like their clothes are too close to their body.
I'm sure there's more but that's all I had after one playthrough.
About the batsmans reactions to singles. I can understand them perhaps wanting a fractional slowdown of the ability to poach singles from extremely close in fielders, but they've massively overdone it. The correct approach would surely have been to speed up the reactions, diving, getting to their feet and throwing of all fielders. Maybe slowing the strikers down for an extra 1-2/10's of a second would've been enough.
As for catches, I still say that catching needs to be properly playable, not just move to the centre of the circle and click. There should be an outer circle which gives you a certain percentage of a chance of a catch and then an inner circle which it's hard to keep the targetting icon still in the middle of. Along with that you could have timing for the outer circle of the catch (red-no, orange-doubtful, yellow-goodish, green-now!!!, then past that red). Make fielding a part of the game, like in real life!
Overall, I think there's hope for this game, but it needs a lot of small and important fixes, more stability and definitely much better likenesses!