Srinath Krishna
School Cricketer
What normally happens is individual CPU intensive algorithms are substituted with pseudo intelligence.
For example, a football game may not have full intelligence for every individual on the pitch as there are too many things to consider for all 22 players, so the players might be grouped and they have intelligence as a group.
I'm not saying this is how it is definitely done, but it is likely.
A better example would be in EA's Rugby games. The players in the defence do not have individual intelligence in terms of assessing the situation of the game, but the players act in a group (the defensive line) and the group has one intelligence, rather than 15.
In a cricket game however, for the most important part of the game (batting and bowling) it's 1 player versus 1 player. Not only that but what can happen is quite limited (the ball bounces in a certain place, will reach batsman at certain height, so certain shot is played by AI).
It becomes more difficult with things like fielding, where there are many people involved. How does each fielder know whether or not to chase the ball, make a dive, etc.? You can't base it on who is nearest, as delays will appear for outfielders if the ball is hit past a close fielder.
I don't know how I got onto this but it seemed quite interesting at the time.
Back to Srinath's question - the sort of thing you're talking about does not have to be real intelligence per se, in that the players don't have to 'remember' what happened. All you can really do is give the players what information you have to go on (i.e. scorecards, etc.) so you can do things like give players extra confidence in a second innings if they scored well in the first innings (a very short-term 'form' or 'morale' stat), or change a batsman's form over a series.
Anyway, I'm babbling. Hope that didn't bore everyone to tears, and that I wasn't stating the obvious.
That's dazzling and you weren't babbling...