While I was in the car going to buy some chicken and mulling over the many reasons sliders are bad, I thought of a mode that could be fun. At least, I think it'd be quite engaging.
I'd call it 'Champions Cricket'. You pick an international team and then have to play the top twenty other international teams in order of ranking of their strength. Until you beat them all. Maybe if you beat the best team it unlocks a World XI you have to play or an all time XI.
It could be a good way of creating something that has any ever increasing difficulty curve. You start out playing PNG and have to work your way up, beating the other teams to take on India (or whoever the top ranked side is). Could have a leaderboard where people can compare themselves to others, different difficulty levels so you get replay value (other than trying to improve you previous best).
A lot of other games you can compare how good or skilled you are to other people and having a challenge mode like this, that could be recorded in how many matches it takes you to complete would be quite satisfying.
I think you'd need teams with hard locked player skills and line ups (specifically for this mode, so you can't just make all the teams rubbish) and hard locked difficulties (sliders would render the community comparison aspect of it pointless).
Could go one step further with an extra hard mode that when you lose you have to start again at the bottom of the ladder of teams.