Well, I loved this game so much, but I've just been immensly disappointed by it.
First of all, I bought the game on Thursday, and have so far only played on easy except for one other game on medium and this game was 50 overs on hard. I was expecting a tough match, for the AI to make 400 then bowl me out for 50. It was also against Australia, not a weaker team.
First, I won the toss (as usual) and put the AI in. They batted more like they were baseballers than cricketers. I mean who slogs from the first over in RL in a 50 over game? So they did manage to hit the odd boundary but lost tonnes of wickets. They were four down after about 3 overs... Come on. It's a power play and they managed to get caught in the slips and outfield repeatedly. I didn't even use the cheap yorker tactics I usually use against the AI.
Then, Ponting consolidated for a while, still smashing the ball for 5 overs odd. After the powerplay, the AI's good period came, where it batted very smartly, and made me change my bowlers and angles. This is when I thought the AI batted very smartly, and made the most of my terrible bowling. Then, after Ponting made 130 odd, I got him and Haddin, and they started to really lose wickets. Johnson then came in and batted well for a while, with a 50, but really Aussie were in a hole due to the silly batting early on.
So I brought back my M, Pathan and he takes out the rest of their tailend thanks to some good swing, where the AI left ball that managed to swing and hit middle. I got some specials with him and used inverse swing to finish the AI. They made 289, a challenging score you'd think...
But it wasn't. The AI bowled only slightly better than the easy AI did and I had virtually no problems for the whole innings, even when my batsmen were rattled and unsettled. I ended up winning by 4 wickets. I smashed everything, but some silly calling (something I just haven't caught well on to, the running), meant I lost 6 wickets. But this was due to my incompetence not the AI's brilliance. The AI kept the same 3 bowlers on for pretty much the whole 23 overs, Lee, Johnson and a little bit of Bracken. It also used Hauritz in the last over. I could've finished the game easily in 18 or 19 overs, but I wanted to practice my hooks and my slog sweeps, so kept getting rattled when it wasn't the right length to do that. All in all, it was just too simple to thrash the AI. Had I batted first, I was on track easily for 1000-1500... And this is my 3rd day of play. The thing is, once the batsman is settled, it's just too easy to score freely even when all fielders are deep.
So I cannot believe that me, a gaming ******, managed to crush what is meant to be one of the toughest cricket AI's there is, after only a few days at the CR crease.
So in my mind, this joins Codemasters and EA as too easy. I might still play 10 over hard games in preperation for online, but that was my last 50 over offline game and 20 overs will probably be easy too. Hopefully I can challenge myself online!
And guys, I am obviously finding this game easier than the others as a newbie, some of you are finding it tough, so I'll try and give yall some tips that I used as a guy requested in another thread.