[Latest patch on Steam]
Just batted for about an hour in Ashes test match as England,
AI fielding does look all right:
1. they dropped one catch out of 3 or 4, (the one dropped was actually quite a tough chance to be fair- running backwards, very little time to react).
2. Ground fielding looks fine as well... Still some odd weird stuff at times whenever the fielder chases and taps the ball back from near the boundary. But it feels better now with every patch I guess.
in general, it was fine- it was effective.
3. didn't see any overthrows.
Batting (this is on hard/ hardest difficulty with pitch marker =12, AI Bowl quality =100)
1. Not going to talk about the technical issues with the mechanism- many people have highlighted already,
2. I am beginning to sense the most irritating thing of all, certainly, is how the AI bowls and sets fields.
a ) On an average, it seems like every over there will easily be 2-3 balls on your pads/ a bit short. And there's only going to be a fine leg and square leg on the leg side. Help yourselves.
b ) the issues of scoring through cover point on off side, plus the fact that the game allows you to pull good balls outside off behind square (which is practically impossible IRL), in addition to point (a) above, mean that you end up scoring 70-80% of your runs through leg side. Gets boring after some time.
c ) AI feels like they got no plan. They just keep bowling random areas all the time (didn't face any spin btw, only pace). I also felt there's a significant lack of bowling high quality balls consistently ( although it is easy to pull even balls in good quality areas square on the leg side
)- you know like great line and length, around off try and swing it. If not then just try back of a length around off with odd bouncer, put some extra protection on leg side but no... I am not sure but it used to feel different and more fun in C19 for sure.
3. Definitely some issue with pitch marker timing