Following on from my last update, I have things to report!
Firstly, I should point out that I played session one of this test with the old patch, then it updated at lunch time today to the new patch, so there are some differences there.
As promised previously, here's the first 10 overs of the match as Jimmy and Broady give the West Indies a working over in favourable conditions (old patch).
There's some play and misses in there, a few edges, a few wickets, some nice shots from the AI. A good, mixed bag.
As reported, WI were 81-3 at lunch. Chase came out and attacked after the break, he was tricky. Blackwood seemed to just ride his luck, finding every gap without ever looking convincing. He eventually pushed his luck too far, gambling on one to mid-off that didn't work out for him as he got run out. Joe Root came in and took one with some suspiciously overpowering looking spin, bit disappointing. And Chase's was a beautiful dismissal that I've not seen before.
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And that was tea. Not the collapse I'd have liked, but a good even session, nearly identical in terms of wickets and runs to the morning, funnily enough.
Then things got a bit....crap.
Joshua Da Silva got out in a very bizarre way off Joe Root, and since that was 2nd wicket in 2 overs either side of tea, I just took him off immediately:
Then Mayers got out to a horrible looking caught and bowled that I'm fairly sure would be physically impossible for anyone to do without breaking their legs:
Then, for the much discussed 9, 10 and 11. I would like to preface this by saying that I have pretty much removed all batting skill from these 3 players, #11 especially. Seales has zero's across the board.
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Not great.
Not terrible, there's no stupidly high scores in there, but still, look how many balls they all faced. Seales in particular was playing like David Gower, it was just effortless cover drive after effortless cover drive, it cheesed me off. These 3 batters were as close to "automatic" as I faced in the entire innings. I reckon each other them played and missed into the double digits, but only to balls missing the wickets, of course. Still, the new cherry did for them in the end.
I plan to do a full 3 match series with these teams and settings, so I'll not be too quick to judge anything. However, if pressed I'd say the following:
- This was probably "felt" better and more believable than the base rated teams I had been using.
- The game play issues with Cricket 22 are still present, this isn't a magic fix and people shouldn't view it as such.
I think the best way to describe it is that these reskilled teams present the user with some more interest around what would normally happen, but it'll all happen anyway.
The match will still play out largely as I reckon as if you didn't reskill the teams, but you'll get play and misses and more variety between wickets falling than you would otherwise. That's how it felt, anyway.
For example, I had loads of edges, loads of plays and misses, but they were 90% scripted not to go to hands or cause dismissals due to the wicket chance slider, so it's giving the impression of "balance" and chances, when really, you're going to get what you're going to get. I'd love to see a proper collapse, but I'm just not sure how the game can do that.
To back up my thoughts, I'll give you this:
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This was my first innings with similar sliders on a similar pitch but without reskilled teams. Like I say, maybe you reach the same destination you were going to reach anyway, the scenery is just a little bit nicer along the way.
I'll see what my innings and their 2nd innings throw up, since I've also reduced England's batting ability.
