SLIDERS - Around the world in 80 pitch sliders.....again

Cracking post @Rumple43 with great data and well presented for easy digestion.

Its clear then that pitch wear is a thing, but more so for seamers visually, but perhaps just as much if not more for spinners but possibly under the hood, that a fair summary?

As for the temp tests, again, something seems to happen there, but its opposite of what you would expect, in that cooler temps seem to make the cracks have more of an effect than the red hot ones.

Hmmmm - a bit to digest, and some thought needed on what else can be tested.

Its good to see pitch wear exists in some form (and the simmed data would really seem to suggest this too?) but it doesnt all seem to make sense.

Good work.
 
Here we go...

I plan on working through a few different series' but AI vs AI, it could be deemed surplus or trivial but I figure as we all have the element of human error, skill gap etc, I can do what I can to tweak and fine tune the AI to the best they can be in terms of realism. Here's what I've found so far.

I've started with the England vs India series, 1 test down.

1641579096101.png1641579113774.png1641579134603.png1641579152309.png1641579169262.png1641579191980.png1641579223908.png1641579244363.png1641579273639.png

England won the toss & decided to bowl first, Rahul inside nick onto his off stump then not long after Pujara went to play a cover drive that he caught too late and was caught at point.

Kohli's wicket was a flick onto the leg side that he completely missed - there were no movement on the ball, a fairly straight one so not sure what happened there. Early on I'm not seeing anything to be too concerned about.

It was interesting to see how the game was programmed to adapt to being 94/3 before lunch on the first day.

Rahane was steady and then just as him and Rohit were getting started Jimmy managed to pad him up when he's trying to play a simple forward defence.

Then it starts to go downhill... Rishabh is just settling and it looks like India can go on to get a decent score on this wicket, then a daft run out comes, which essentially ruins the flow of the innings, it was a run for 2 which was never really on, makes it worse when Lawrence pings a direct hit, one bounce in from the fence.

I don't know if this was an anomaly or not but I'm not using re-skilled teams at this point yet the tail did nothing. Lord Shardul, will be Lord Shardul.

Onto the re-skilling, or lack of in my case, you could see that Sam Curran was the worst of the bowlers, I didn't see anything from the bowlers that makes me think they need nerfing or increasing from a pure bowling perspective.

I'd like to see some no balls over the line and maybe less of the short balls that go for miles out for 4, but they make up for the lack of extra's in no balls so I'm happy to leave them for now.

In terms of batting, 72 of Root's 117 runs were from 4s, 64 of Crawley's 111 were, 48 of Kohli's 62 runs were. So I think that's where I'll bring re-skilling in.

England's 1st innings was very England like... Burns & Sibley only walked out to get some steps in on their fitbit. Nothing wrong with either of their wickets.

Crawley & Root looked very comfortable until they brought Jadeja into the attack & he got them both in his first 4/5 overs.

Bairstow looked fine & Dan Lawrence came about and attempted to smack all of his balls into the comet that's predicted to land in 6 months and 14 days from Netflix's 'Don't look up'.

I'm not sure if he's programmed as an aggressive batter? Or whether he has a trait to take spinners on? He hit a 4 & 6 but then smacked it out to Thakur on the boundary? Very odd as this was the morning of Day 2 and England were 122-4 at this point. The thing is, it's England's middle order so who actually knows?

Buttler looked solid till Bairstow got in the exact same way Rohit did, a late cover drive straight to point. Buttler then nicked off to Rahane who I think was at slip iirc.

Curran was another daft runout for no reason, the tail again, no issues with it at all.

After this, I was concerned at the low scores and it was only Day 2, 14:30ish. India did bowl very well, as they did irl at Trent Bridge, infact if you compare the first innings scorecard, it's almost identical.

India's 2nd innings is where it basically all went wrong and the glaring errors of the game shined through. 3 run outs, all of which should never happen, all just ruined any chance of a competitive score. Kohli & Pant looked like they were on for tonnes, Kohli's wicket annoyed me, then seeing Pant's made it worse. It also skews up the bowlers figures aswell, you bowl the team out yet the bowlers are in a test match taking 6/7 wickets between them.

I saw issue's with the tail here, Bumrah was batting like a prime Sir Don - if anything he needed a run out. He would've probably gotten a half century if he wasn't for them being bowled out.

Again, no re-skilling needed with the bowlers that I can see yet & I know it's all subjective but you can see Sam Curran isn't on the level of Anderson & Broad.

From both this innings and India's bowling innings, a lack of extra's & no no-balls.

So we're now going into the start of Day 3 and England are coming in to get 202 to win the match... well they won by quarter past 4.

I get it, it happens sometimes, England batted well & I didn't see anything that needed fixing. India possibly brought Jadeja on too late but the ball wasn't turning anywhere near what it seemed to be in the first innings. Is this just randomly programmed by the game to have spells of high turn?

Overall, I think the test match was... ruined by the run outs, maybe 1 per innings I can let slide, but it does stop any decent partnerships from building & just changes the flow of games in ways it shouldn't.

The 3 run outs in India's 2nd basically took a potential, 300+ chase into Day 3 tea to an easy 202 chase at the start of Day 3.

Maybe this was just an anomaly but for the next test I will be using @Rumple43 recommendations. I'm also hoping this brings the boundaries down also (which in turn will bring the RR down) I'm just worried it could increase the run-outs.

We'll see... anyway next up is England vs India 2nd test & the 1st test of West Indies vs. Pakistan.

I'm hoping to get these done over the weekend, it shouldn't be a problem.

Apologies if in the wrong thread as I get this could potentially be more about re-skilling, but the sliders are working well, there just seems to be inconsistency in Jadeja's spin. Maybe I haven't seen enough overs to assess properly.

Let me know what you guys think.
 
Excellent insight and presented really well.
Cheers bud, much appreciated!

Thanks for all of that. Great analysis and insight and makes me really feel that BA have put some variation into the game.

My only issue with it is that no matter where the ball pitches, turns, bounces etc the AI batsmen always know whether it's hitting the stumps or not so automatically leave everything. So in theory it should become harder to bat on as the pitch wears, as in real life but on the game the AI seems to have already decided seemingly before the ball has been bowled whether its a leave, a scoring shot or a wicket unfortunately.
This is the thing. The AI can calculate the movement in an instant, there's no reaction time there. They will leave balls that aren't on the stumps, regardless of how improbable it seems that those balls will actually miss the stump at any stage to the user.

That is partly why I think there could be some internal, behind the scenes tinkering of sliders and batting difficulty, to make chances and edges come more often as games go on and pitch wear increases. That keeps things a bit more level vs the human input of a user.

Cracking post @Rumple43 with great data and well presented for easy digestion.

Its clear then that pitch wear is a thing, but more so for seamers visually, but perhaps just as much if not more for spinners but possibly under the hood, that a fair summary?

As for the temp tests, again, something seems to happen there, but its opposite of what you would expect, in that cooler temps seem to make the cracks have more of an effect than the red hot ones.

Hmmmm - a bit to digest, and some thought needed on what else can be tested.

Its good to see pitch wear exists in some form (and the simmed data would really seem to suggest this too?) but it doesnt all seem to make sense.

Good work.
"Its clear then that pitch wear is a thing, but more so for seamers visually, but perhaps just as much if not more for spinners but possibly under the hood, that a fair summary?"

I think this statement is potentially fairly accurate

THere are some useful takeaway for creating more seam dominant pitches, like South Africa, and West Indies to. We've discussed pitch types for these countries, but we haven't really discussed what cracks to use.

Heavily cracked pitches from day 1 would seem to suit both countries quite well.

Something I can can potentially build into future slider spreadsheets, for sure.
 
Excellent stuff @Rumple43 . Your work, along with that of Wealey and Waste is the only thing that has me playing this game in it's current state.

Struggling like hell in a tour match at the Kensington Oval with Ireland on your WI settings. Almost allows me to forget about the AI....until they inevitably do something stupid.
 
Here we go...

I plan on working through a few different series' but AI vs AI, it could be deemed surplus or trivial but I figure as we all have the element of human error, skill gap etc, I can do what I can to tweak and fine tune the AI to the best they can be in terms of realism. Here's what I've found so far.

I've started with the England vs India series, 1 test down.

View attachment 261057View attachment 261058View attachment 261059View attachment 261060View attachment 261061View attachment 261062View attachment 261063View attachment 261064View attachment 261065

England won the toss & decided to bowl first, Rahul inside nick onto his off stump then not long after Pujara went to play a cover drive that he caught too late and was caught at point.

Kohli's wicket was a flick onto the leg side that he completely missed - there were no movement on the ball, a fairly straight one so not sure what happened there. Early on I'm not seeing anything to be too concerned about.

It was interesting to see how the game was programmed to adapt to being 94/3 before lunch on the first day.

Rahane was steady and then just as him and Rohit were getting started Jimmy managed to pad him up when he's trying to play a simple forward defence.

Then it starts to go downhill... Rishabh is just settling and it looks like India can go on to get a decent score on this wicket, then a daft run out comes, which essentially ruins the flow of the innings, it was a run for 2 which was never really on, makes it worse when Lawrence pings a direct hit, one bounce in from the fence.

I don't know if this was an anomaly or not but I'm not using re-skilled teams at this point yet the tail did nothing. Lord Shardul, will be Lord Shardul.

Onto the re-skilling, or lack of in my case, you could see that Sam Curran was the worst of the bowlers, I didn't see anything from the bowlers that makes me think they need nerfing or increasing from a pure bowling perspective.

I'd like to see some no balls over the line and maybe less of the short balls that go for miles out for 4, but they make up for the lack of extra's in no balls so I'm happy to leave them for now.

In terms of batting, 72 of Root's 117 runs were from 4s, 64 of Crawley's 111 were, 48 of Kohli's 62 runs were. So I think that's where I'll bring re-skilling in.

England's 1st innings was very England like... Burns & Sibley only walked out to get some steps in on their fitbit. Nothing wrong with either of their wickets.

Crawley & Root looked very comfortable until they brought Jadeja into the attack & he got them both in his first 4/5 overs.

Bairstow looked fine & Dan Lawrence came about and attempted to smack all of his balls into the comet that's predicted to land in 6 months and 14 days from Netflix's 'Don't look up'.

I'm not sure if he's programmed as an aggressive batter? Or whether he has a trait to take spinners on? He hit a 4 & 6 but then smacked it out to Thakur on the boundary? Very odd as this was the morning of Day 2 and England were 122-4 at this point. The thing is, it's England's middle order so who actually knows?

Buttler looked solid till Bairstow got in the exact same way Rohit did, a late cover drive straight to point. Buttler then nicked off to Rahane who I think was at slip iirc.

Curran was another daft runout for no reason, the tail again, no issues with it at all.

After this, I was concerned at the low scores and it was only Day 2, 14:30ish. India did bowl very well, as they did irl at Trent Bridge, infact if you compare the first innings scorecard, it's almost identical.

India's 2nd innings is where it basically all went wrong and the glaring errors of the game shined through. 3 run outs, all of which should never happen, all just ruined any chance of a competitive score. Kohli & Pant looked like they were on for tonnes, Kohli's wicket annoyed me, then seeing Pant's made it worse. It also skews up the bowlers figures aswell, you bowl the team out yet the bowlers are in a test match taking 6/7 wickets between them.

I saw issue's with the tail here, Bumrah was batting like a prime Sir Don - if anything he needed a run out. He would've probably gotten a half century if he wasn't for them being bowled out.

Again, no re-skilling needed with the bowlers that I can see yet & I know it's all subjective but you can see Sam Curran isn't on the level of Anderson & Broad.

From both this innings and India's bowling innings, a lack of extra's & no no-balls.

So we're now going into the start of Day 3 and England are coming in to get 202 to win the match... well they won by quarter past 4.

I get it, it happens sometimes, England batted well & I didn't see anything that needed fixing. India possibly brought Jadeja on too late but the ball wasn't turning anywhere near what it seemed to be in the first innings. Is this just randomly programmed by the game to have spells of high turn?

Overall, I think the test match was... ruined by the run outs, maybe 1 per innings I can let slide, but it does stop any decent partnerships from building & just changes the flow of games in ways it shouldn't.

The 3 run outs in India's 2nd basically took a potential, 300+ chase into Day 3 tea to an easy 202 chase at the start of Day 3.

Maybe this was just an anomaly but for the next test I will be using @Rumple43 recommendations. I'm also hoping this brings the boundaries down also (which in turn will bring the RR down) I'm just worried it could increase the run-outs.

We'll see... anyway next up is England vs India 2nd test & the 1st test of West Indies vs. Pakistan.

I'm hoping to get these done over the weekend, it shouldn't be a problem.

Apologies if in the wrong thread as I get this could potentially be more about re-skilling, but the sliders are working well, there just seems to be inconsistency in Jadeja's spin. Maybe I haven't seen enough overs to assess properly.

Let me know what you guys think.
Really interesting stuff, the AI v AI is a fun little avenue to explore. I'll be interested to see how two computer controlled teams do with the sliders.

I was thinking the same as you with the surprisingly low scores, but yeah, pulling the real scorecard out puts that to bed!

The run outs are annoying. If I get a dumb one I dashboard it, close the game and reload. Take a minute or two to get back playing, but it stops a game being ruined in the long run.

Keep us posted, good work!
 
Right then, pitch wear.

I did ponder about posting this, since some of the physics have changed with the latest patch, but I figure the only thing BA have likely changed is bounce on medium pitches. That "shouldn't" affect wear, or anything else I found pre-patch.

As always, I'll whack stuff behind spoiler tags so that the post doesn't become too much of a beast.

For anyone that can't be bothered with my rambling posts (and I am aware there must be more than a few folk in that category), here's the long and short. If you want the reasoning behind the long and the short, you'll have to read on:
  • Pitch wear is apparent for seam bowlers
  • These differences are shown by an increase in lateral movement, presumably off cracks that have developed on the pitch.
  • These cracks do not appear to be immediately visible, but pitch wear is a visual thing. (These 3 points are covered in the first spoiler box)
  • I can see less evidence of any pitch wear affecting spin bowling, but have other theories on this. (This is covered in the second spoiler box)
  • I have a feeling that the weather (or another factor) may also affect pitch wear, but this has been harder to test. (This is covered in the third spoiler box)
For reference, Jimmy Anderson and Moeen Ali were used as the seamer and spinner in all instances. I played England v England with identical line ups. All English games were played at Old Trafford. All Indian games were played at Delhi. All deliveries are standard, standard speed, and there's no after touch input provided at all.

5 balls in the over, grab data, the usual deal etc. The sliders used were the same for all pitches, I didn't chop and change anything around, so any variance should have come from the pitch itself.

Eyes down, look in and here...we...go!

I started by grabbing data in a number of related but different set ups. I have some grassy, some standard, and some dusty pitch data, and eight pitches in total were set up in slightly different ways.

Based on my bullet points above, I reckon that cracks form and affect lateral movement for seam bowlers.

Here are three different Day 1 overs from Jimmy, side by side. These are different types of pitch, but all are set to NONE for starting cracks:

View attachment 261043
Pretty uniform. Nothing is misbehaving. This is as good as a pitch will get, and as such, there is very little unexpected lateral movement.

Now lets move on to compare the image above to something else. The following is from Day 1 of a HEAVY CRACKED, GRASSY pitch. Still day 1 like the three side-by-side images above, but we've opened those bad boys as much as we can from the get go:

View attachment 261044
A much wider spread. Either Jimmy is off form and he's suddenly spraying it around, or we have some variance.

The pitch points appear fairly similar. Looking through the stumps there's nothing in the gap between off and middle, and the blue delivery, ball #3, appears the widest pitch mark just outside of off stump.

There's nothing that's leaping out as being way off, but the difference between the end point of green delivery to leg and the blue delivery to off is more than a set of stumps.

Remember, there's no differing user input here, it's the same every time with only the bowler's attributes to provide the differences ball to ball.

Let's take this a step further.

Below are two images from the same game, so the pitch is the same. The pitch is STANDARD, MEDIUM hardness, pitch that had NO CRACKS to begin with. Wear is set to FAST.

On the left is Day 1, on the right is Day 4:

View attachment 261046
No cracks on the left, Day 1. On the right is Day 4.

Again, looking at through the stumps, all balls on both sides of the image appear to be pitching on off stump or just wide of off stump. On the left, a lot of consistency. On the right, well, it's all over the place. There's two balls that pitched just outside off and have held their line, and three that have pitched maybe a few inches straighter on the stumps and two of them are then missing leg.

Here's a more dramatic one, to prove the point.

Here is a GRASSY, MEDIUM, HEAVILY CRACKED pitch, with FAST WEAR ON.

Here we're going to compare Day 1 and Day 4 again. Day 1 on the left, Day 4 on the right. The pitch is starting life fairly smashed up, let's see how it developed:

View attachment 261048
Well, that is fairly conclusive I reckon. Look at those two on the right that have pitched on off stump!! They're off to fine leg, the keeper can forget about them.

I also like the clump of three balls on the right of right hand image, the mega bad pitch. Heavy cracks that have then had 3 days of play on them. They all have fairly close pitch points, but the delivery that appears to have pitched the widest outside off stump actually crosses back over and would hit the top of off stump. I'd imagine if you left the green and dark red deliveries, you'd more than likely leave the brown one, and that'd take your timber out!

What is far less obvious, and a bit harder to document, is variable bounce. You can see from all the images above across the various different pitches and days, there's no alarming differences in bounce height. Some balls will have pitched slightly shorter or fuller than others, that's just Jimmy's natural variance. I certainly saw zero evidence of anything leaping up, or scooting low. All the movement was lateral.

Something else to note, and this is from a game that I did manage to get to Day 5, from memory it was a pristine track to start with, so this is 4 days of wear:


One delivery acting very differently, like a slower ball, or potentially the other four acting like a cross seamer. All were standard deliveries, but is this another variation that "cracks" help to produce? I noticed this effect more than once, most games in fact.

So pitch wear is a thing. It creates lateral movement for seam bowlers, but as far as I can tell, there's no visual clue as to where the cracks are, or which balls will be affected.

So, that was easy. Pace bowling. Select a pitch, Day 1 data, Day 4 data, observe differences. Done! I suppose it was too much to ask for spin to be the same.

Let's do the same process as we did for pace above, and follow through.

Three Day 1 pitches, all with cracks set to NONE.

View attachment 261049
As an aside, it is pleasing the the only dusty track in there is the one on the left, which appears to show the most turn, so that's good. Either way, they all look pretty similar in terms of turn and bounce. As you'd expect on a spotless deck.

As before, now let's look at Day 1 of a HEAVILY CRACKED, GRASSY pitch:

View attachment 261050
Not much doing there, I'll not lie. If anything, there is now less spin, with only a couple of deliveries missing leg stump and three now hitting middle and leg or leg.

Continuing the process below are two images from the same game, so the pitch is the same. The pitch is STANDARD, MEDIUM hardness, pitch that had NO CRACKS to begin with. Wear is set to FAST.

On the left is Day 1, on the right is Day 4:

View attachment 261051
So pristine pitch on the left, and three days of play on the right. Looks to me that if anything, there's less spin on a worn pitch that a new one. And based on the image above, adding heavy cracks also appears to slightly reduce the amount of spin as well, compared to a pitch with no cracks. Odd.

Last one, completing the process.

Here is a GRASSY, MEDIUM, HEAVILY CRACKED pitch, with FAST WEAR ON.

Here we're going to compare Day 1 and Day 4 again. Day 1 on the left, Day 4 on the right:

View attachment 261052
You could say the blue delivery on the right is the outlier here, that looks to have bounced and turned less. The grouping on Day 4 is perhaps a little wilder than on Day 1.

I can share all the data if people want, but in short, I'm seeing very little variation from a spin bowler regardless of pitch wear. Deliveries just all seem to clump together.

But, when simming games, and I did sim quite a few to get my data, the games pretty much all contained lower scores as games wore on, without fail almost. I saw some double digit 4th inning scores on the knackered, dusty pitches as well, with Ali taking five or more wickets for not many runs on more than one occasion.

For me, I think pitches do get more difficult to bat on, which leaves me to wonder why.

I have zero evidence to back this up, so take it as you will, but I think the game does something behind the scenes with spinners and spin sliders that make them harder for the AI to play as a game goes on. It could be the edge mechanics that increase, or something along those lines, but visually there is little to suggest there's any difference at all. Yet the game seems to play like there is. So.....IDK.

So pitch wear is a thing for seamers, but it is a lot more murky for spinners. The data I saw suggested that spotless or heavily cracked pitches offered little difference, but there "could" be something going off behind the scenes.

Last one, you've done well to stay the course here, congrats!

Below is a four image grid. The pitch is identical in all images. It is a STANDARD pitch, MEDIUM hardness, NO CRACKS, FAST WEAR.

The top left image is Day 1 in England. The top right is Day 4 in England.

The bottom left is Day 1 in India. The bottom right is Day 4 in India.

View attachment 261054
A few things....

Both left hand images (no cracks) continue the theme or little to no lateral movement. Good to see.

The bottom right image may be skewed by the two balls that have pitched between middle and off. These must have just been bad ones from Jimmy, sadly.

Can we say the bottom right image has the most lateral movement? The forecast in the bottom Indian images was 30-35c throughout. The top images in England were set to Autumn, with a max of 10c. Can we say that the heat has done anything different to the two images on the right by Day 4? I'm unsure.

Let's try again. Same deal.

Below is a four image grid. The pitch is identical in all images. It is a DUSTY pitch, MEDIUM hardness, HEAVY CRACKS, FAST WEAR.

The top left image is Day 1 in England. The top right is Day 4 in England. Less than 10c throughout.

The bottom left is Day 1 in India. The bottom right is Day 4 in India. North of 30c throughout.

View attachment 261055
Do we think the top right, England Day 4, has the most movement? The pitches are identical remember. We're only talking about the temperature here.

Could it be a bit like spin, and the reverse of what we think is actually a thing. You bring the temperatures down and cracks get a bit wider? I don't know. I want to say that weather causes some form of difference though. Maybe it just needs more testing.
Great stuff and i think this backs up what I’ve seen too
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Is the “DRY HARD” Aussie settings in the spreadsheet the “road” @WealeyH talked about?

I sure hope so, given the score the AI are currently 201/3. I‘m reduced to trying Roy Frederick’s chinamen while i wait for the new ball!
 
Great stuff and i think this backs up what I’ve seen too
Post automatically merged:

Is the “DRY HARD” Aussie settings in the spreadsheet the “road” @WealeyH talked about?

I sure hope so, given the score the AI are currently 201/3. I‘m reduced to trying Roy Frederick’s chinamen while i wait for the new ball!
Yes Sir
 
Is the “DRY HARD” Aussie settings in the spreadsheet the “road” @WealeyH talked about?
I believe so, with pitch friction at 65 edges will be rarer than rocking horse shyte.
Post automatically merged:

I‘m reduced to trying Roy Frederick’s chinamen while i wait for the new ball!
This gives me a testing thought @Rumple43

Does the new ball provide more lateral movement than an old one, and if so, wheres the cut off point, does the ball lose much of its new swing after 10/20/30 overs etc?

Be nice to see if the new ball effect is also a thing in this game.
 
I believe so, with pitch friction at 65 edges will be rarer than rocking horse shyte.
Post automatically merged:


This gives me a testing thought @Rumple43

Does the new ball provide more lateral movement than an old one, and if so, wheres the cut off point, does the ball lose much of its new swing after 10/20/30 overs etc?

Be nice to see if the new ball effect is also a thing in this game.
Anecdotally from observation, i reckon there IS a new ball effect but i don’t think it would be visible in @Rumple43 method testing on standard deliveries as i don’t think it shows as movement off the seam, i think it has an increased wicket chance, and increased swing for about 15-20 overs. then if you remember to shine you’ll get a bit more swing again after around 40 overs, modelling reverse swing though you still choose “outswing’ to swing it away - it’s not actually reversed.

as i say, this is purely observation in FC not with rigorous testing
Post automatically merged:

I think the run rate goes up about on a new ball too, modelling a harder ball coming off the bat. So i think it may show up in testing in higher vertical bounce but not lateral
 
I agree, with my own anecdotal evidence based on no more than i seem to be able to clean the tail of the AI up much quicker when i take the new ball. Could be coincidence but like you i think under the hood the wicket chance is pumped up for a while to reflect the reality of the new cherry.
 
I have to say I'm absolutely loving the West Indies sliders. I'm still not ready to invest in a career yet until everything is sorted in that regard so instead my Ireland team are playing a warmup match against Barbados at the Kensington Oval in advance of the 3 test series and batting first we struggled like hell. Roach was bowling 85mph leg cutters, Jason Holder back of a length 5th stump nipping both ways and Warrican channelling his inner Herath.

This has been the most enjoyable and challenging innings of cricket I've played on this game and it's largely down to the slider amendments IMHO.

It looks like there was little variation in dismissal but the manner of nicks were sufficiently different to impress me. 3 of those caught were out playing defensively and being beaten by movement, Balbirnie to a screamer at gully and Tucker and Singh, behind. Porterfield padded up to an in ducker, Dockrell was beaten by sharp turn and Tector and Hume holed out, the latter to a really impressive over the shoulder catch by Chemar Holder.

The AI is still daft as a brush though, changing fields and bowlers way too often, Roach coming round the wicket at 80-4 and bowling to an offside field, overthrows back in latest patch but that said, kudos to BA for fixing the offside accessibility, it really is much improved and I found that even moving a few notches out of my crease meant opening up minute angles I couldn't when back on the stumps.

Wealey and Rumple are keeping the game alive for me whilst BA fix and break things in their patches. Keep it up chaps!

Screenshot 2022-01-08 085752.png

And now to bowl (let us all pray for no 6th ball scripting)...who knew that Barbados was basically the entire West Indies test team? Some bloomin' warm up!
 
I have to say I'm absolutely loving the West Indies sliders. I'm still not ready to invest in a career yet until everything is sorted in that regard so instead my Ireland team are playing a warmup match against Barbados at the Kensington Oval in advance of the 3 test series and batting first we struggled like hell. Roach was bowling 85mph leg cutters, Jason Holder back of a length 5th stump nipping both ways and Warrican channelling his inner Herath.

This has been the most enjoyable and challenging innings of cricket I've played on this game and it's largely down to the slider amendments IMHO.

It looks like there was little variation in dismissal but the manner of nicks were sufficiently different to impress me. 3 of those caught were out playing defensively and being beaten by movement, Balbirnie to a screamer at gully and Tucker and Singh, behind. Porterfield padded up to an in ducker, Dockrell was beaten by sharp turn and Tector and Hume holed out, the latter to a really impressive over the shoulder catch by Chemar Holder.

The AI is still daft as a brush though, changing fields and bowlers way too often, Roach coming round the wicket at 80-4 and bowling to an offside field, overthrows back in latest patch but that said, kudos to BA for fixing the offside accessibility, it really is much improved and I found that even moving a few notches out of my crease meant opening up minute angles I couldn't when back on the stumps.

Wealey and Rumple are keeping the game alive for me whilst BA fix and break things in their patches. Keep it up chaps!

View attachment 261102

And now to bowl (let us all pray for no 6th ball scripting)...who knew that Barbados was basically the entire West Indies test team? Some bloomin' warm up!
This is great to see. 227 is a pretty solid score on those decks, I'll be interested to see what the AI post on reply. A score like 103 from Tector really is a quality, difference making knock.

Keep us posted!

Are we of the opinion that the new patch will change the bounce sliders needed?
Yes, but only on two of the pitches, England and Asia, as they're the two "medium" strips, which is what has been altered.

The other 4 are hard, so "should" be unaffected.

It's my job for Monday, probably in the afternoon, but let's say early next week to be safe.

As mentioned previously, I don't think it'll need much, 3-5 clicks at most.
 
This is great to see. 227 is a pretty solid score on those decks, I'll be interested to see what the AI post on reply. A score like 103 from Tector really is a quality, difference making knock.

Keep us posted!


Yes, but only on two of the pitches, England and Asia, as they're the two "medium" strips, which is what has been altered.

The other 4 are hard, so "should" be unaffected.

It's my job for Monday, probably in the afternoon, but let's say early next week to be safe.

As mentioned previously, I don't think it'll need much, 3-5 clicks at most.

Can I just say.. that it was standard medium that was adjusted. Not medium. There may of been the good old BA knock on affect. But the intended change was to the “standard” pitch type! @blockerdave
 
Can I just say.. that it was standard medium that was adjusted. Not medium. There may of been the good old BA knock on affect. But the intended change was to the “standard” pitch type! @blockerdave
My grassy medium pitch has less bounce on it for sure, post patch. No idea why, but the ball isn't close to bails now.

I'll look into it, but no doubt if it's unintended it's a change we might be undoing down the line anyway!
 

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