Batting in t20s still feels like an absolute mess

[Jobi1K]

I play on Normal (where's the fun in making things easy?!). I also had CC18, and had the exact same issues on that – unlike you I never managed to crack it on there. I did win the one-day cup a couple of times on CC18 though, so it's not like I can't do limited overs at all.

I think the form thing is a big issue – I just constantly find my players in a death spiral of form. That was particularly a problem in this South African save, where they don't play 2nd XI, so there's no opportunity for them to be playing behind the scenes and getting their form back up (training doesn't really seem to work quickly enough to get them going within the short period of a franchise tournament). By the end of this season I think only two or three of the batters in my whole squad were above 2 stars of form.

I do wonder if maybe looking at the overall stats is misleading me a bit as to who actually is an effective/useful T20 player. A good example in this season was one of my senior openers, who averaged 26 for the season (which wasn't far off his in-game career average), which I guess isn't terrible, but breaking his individual performances down, he got 3 half centuries, but other than that he only scored more than 15 once – so, while he had not the worst average, looking at it in more depth he only really had a good impact on 3 out of the 11 games he played. So maybe I need to look beyond the numbers a bit more when signing players and try to get a sense of those who are more consistently effective in the format.

I know the 150–170 bracket is fairly normal for T20 and it is possible to win from there – as I've said before I think I've got pretty decent at T20 bowling, and in fact, that match I described in my last post where I had the spectacular collapse and finished on 167 after being comfortably on course for a huge total, I actually bowled the oppo out for about 115 so that ended up being a huge win (incidentally, that oppo ended up winning the tournament, which suggests my team could compete if it wanted to!). I'm certainly not expecting to smash 200+ every time, but I'd hope to get a little closer more regularly than I do – the number of times I only manage 130–150 in perfect conditions is infuriating (and is almost never enough to win). And that's a common thing for me batting first or second – I've lost so many games batting second where I've kept the oppo to 170 or less in perfect conditions, which seems a fairly good effort, and then failed miserably to chase it down.

[Yorkie]

Are you playing on Easy or Normal mate?
Are your batters on good to great form?

You do get some 150’s to 170’s but can still win from there if your bowlers are able to perform.

The T20 match engine has been tweaked (for the better) Sureshot says on the new 2021 version, but you’re not on your own, many players have struggled with this short format, check the Forum.

Think I’ve now mastered it, but it took me 5 seasons on 2018 before buying 2020 to do so.

[Jobi1K]

I am beginning to think it's just me that's rubbish at T20, but I'm still struggling to understand what I'm doing wrong! A while ago (taking Sureshot's advice in a different thread on a different subject) I set up a save in the South African domestic T20 to skip through to be able to see the exact international calendar for the following season before I do the contracts for my main (Yorkshire) save. This week I decided to properly play the SA T20 to get some practice in, so did the whole thing really carefully, scrapping most of the existing squad and putting together what on paper looked to be a pretty competitive T20 outfit. But the overall result ended up being almost exactly the same as my last couple of English campaigns!

I finished second bottom, winning only 5 out of 14 games, with the lack of success again mainly down to poor batting performance. I only made it beyond totals of 170 twice (a 190 and a 171). Some of the stand-out performances (for the wrong reasons) were stumbling limply to totals of 130-odd batting first in perfect conditions on several occasions, and on several others failing to chase down pretty modest totals batting second in similarly favourable conditions. The last game of the season was perhaps the most insane though – my openers finally delivered the goods, putting on 145 for the first wicket at about 9.5/over, so seemed I had a brilliant platform to crack the magic 200 barrier, but instead I suffered the most spectacular collapse I think I've ever had, with the last 4 overs bringing just 12 runs for the loss of 7 wickets (the final over was a triple wicket maiden!!), and I finished on 167! I didn't look at real-life stats, but just comparing to in-game career stats it was clear a lot of batters massively underperformed. Worst individual culprit was James Vince, whose season average was 13 below his in-game career average, with a strike rate a massive 24 percentage points below his in-game career SR.

I honestly don't know what more I can do to be more successful with T20 batting! I always play ball by ball, tend to start batters on either the last bar of yellow or first bar of orange depending on conditions/bowler/circumstances and then drop them down 1 or 2 bars for the last couple of balls of the over if I've already hit a boundary or two, then usually look to try to push a bit harder in the second half of the innings. Are there any other suggestions I should try? Am I just really bad at choosing the right players for my squads!? It's the underperformance relative to players' career stats that makes me I'm not doing something as well as I could in gameplay – or that I'm just extremely unlucky!

[Jobi1K]

Phwoar, those are some numbers!

To be fair, de Kock did a pretty decent job in the season I brought him in. I didn't keep him though (think I was just irritated with that entire squad for their collective rubbish performance!), and for the campaign I've just finished I tried Babar Azam who – annoyingly, given his enormous wage demands – wasn't as successful. Poor old Babar definitely isn't getting his contract renewed at the end of the season – come back Quinton, all is forgiven!

[Yorkie]

Try to get in Usman Khawaja AUS. He’s a monster in T20, even as your T20 Overseas if not full Overseas. Reliable and dependable and only Average aggression, he’s a “specialist” batsman in this format.
As he gets older he’s dropped from the Oz squad so you get to keep him playing even more. Win, win!
Just helped me to another Blast title!

[Jobi1K]

Maybe I've still just not got the knack of it, or maybe I'm just incredibly unlucky! I've completed another two Blast campaigns since the one I detailed above with stats. As I noted in the last post, in that campaign I actually had a winning season for the first time in this edition, which was very pleasing (9 wins out of 15 games played). For the next season I splashed out a bit on some serious T20 players including the likes of Quinton de Kock and Moeen Ali, yet somehow regressed performance-wise and finished second bottom of the group, winning only 5 out of 14 matches, the nadir being one game where my (on paper) big-hitting batting line-up limped to about 130 in perfect weather and pitch conditions against in theory weaker opposition. Then in the season just completed I only faired marginally better, winning 6 out of 14, including two games where I suffered the dreaded late-innings dot ball phenomenon that features in several posts up-thread - needing less than a run a ball with 3 overs left with set batsmen and wickets in hand and inexplicably failing to win. The most frustrating one was the final game of the season where I had the chase well in hand, only needed 4 to win off the last over and ended up tying the match - it turned out a win would have got me through to the knockout stage.

Again in these incredibly frustrating seasons it has been the batting that has massively let me down. I'm not too bad with T20 bowling now - the opposition rarely seem to really get away from me. But even with some big T20 names in my team I still can't seem to get the batting going. Feel like I've read about every bit of advice on this forum about T20 batting tactics but absolutely nothing seems to work for me! One approach that does seem to have worked a little better in some recent games is starting new batsmen on the last bar of yellow rather than the first of orange and getting them to try to play themselves in a bit, but even though I find I can build into the innings a bit better, that approach never seems to get me anywhere close to the magic 200 mark. Indeed, I reckon I must have played around eighty T20 matches in this edition by this point, and I think I've hit 200 no more than three times.

I'm still not going to give up on it, but my goodness I hope I can find a way of being a bit more successful soon!

[Sureshot]

Mmnnn,
I know what you’re saying, but I’m not convinced that this is the games fault? I’m Yorkshire too (you’d never have guessed) and just finished season 2023. Bash results so far on normal... 2020 RU, 21 Winners, 22 RU, 23 Winners.

I don’t really have many problems with the T20 format going back to CC2015. There is a learning curve to undergo and yes I agree it can seem to be hit and miss, but once mastered it can be quite rewarding and satisfying.

The actual career stats whilst providing season accuracy are not much comparison to how you play this format, how attacking you are, which openers you use, match conditions, bowling economy etc etc.

I can start batting on the last amber level below red aggression and regularly hit 200. This year, surprising myself, I’ve been starting off with 2 Ave aggression specialists and sometimes hit 220 which goes against “the grain“ of what we’ve been told to do (start off with 2 big Agg hitters) ie, Bairstow, Lyth).

It’s all open to interpretation, but I wouldn’t read too deeply into what the stats ‘should’ be telling you. It’s down to your own tactics, aggression levels, match conditions, players chosen and their form and what the players are capable of achieving on the day.
Even winning the toss...

There is a significant risk vs reward, I've had times on maximum aggression with CC2020 where i've scored at 13-15 an over for 4 overs.

As per our comments in Scritty's thread, 20 Over is notoriously out of control, with very few events that the user can manage compared to FC and even OD. A OD innings is 2.5x the length of a 20 over.

There has also been a significant change from CC2019 to CC2020, and that is the chasing AI. There is a slight advantage to chasing in the real world, about 55-60% of teams chasing win, the changes made to the AI in CC2020 reflects that and it's quite a significant change from CC2019 in that respect.

20 over balance is on the agenda for CC2021, and we'll be revealing more details nearer to release.

[Yorkie]

Mmnnn,
I know what you’re saying, but I’m not convinced that this is the games fault? I’m Yorkshire too (you’d never have guessed) and just finished season 2023. Bash results so far on normal... 2020 RU, 21 Winners, 22 RU, 23 Winners.

I don’t really have many problems with the T20 format going back to CC2015. There is a learning curve to undergo and yes I agree it can seem to be hit and miss, but once mastered it can be quite rewarding and satisfying.

The actual career stats whilst providing season accuracy are not much comparison to how you play this format, how attacking you are, which openers you use, match conditions, bowling economy etc etc.

I can start batting on the last amber level below red aggression and regularly hit 200. This year, surprising myself, I’ve been starting off with 2 Ave aggression specialists and sometimes hit 220 which goes against “the grain“ of what we’ve been told to do (start off with 2 big Agg hitters) ie, Bairstow, Lyth).

It’s all open to interpretation, but I wouldn’t read too deeply into what the stats ‘should’ be telling you. It’s down to your own tactics, aggression levels, match conditions, players chosen and their form and what the players are capable of achieving on the day.
Even winning the toss...

[Jobi1K]

Just completed my third season in CC20, and managed to qualify for the knockout stages of the English T20 for the first time, enjoying my first winning season (9 wins, 6 defeats). But it definitely felt like this relative success compared to the previous two seasons was built on good bowling rather than batting - don't think I made a total of more than 170 even in any of the wins I had. So I thought it'd be interesting to compare the stats of my recognised batsmen or all-rounders (who played at least 5 games) in this slightly more successful season with their real-life career stats...

Gary Ballance - 2022 CC season average: 17.63 (real-life career ave: 23.21); 2022 CC season strike rate: 117.5 (real-life career strike rate: 122.16)
Tom Kohler-Cadmore - ave: 33.33 (29.61); s/r: 120.5 (140.1)
Adam Lyth - ave: 15.20 (26.72); s/r: 120.6 (144.5)
Harry Brook - ave: 23.50 (27.80); s/r: 124.8 (145.9)
Fakhar Zaman - ave: 19.62 (27.80); s/r: 114.3 (135.8)
Jonny Bairstow - ave: 23.29 (29.83); s/r: 130.4 (135.1)
Jonny Tattersall - ave: 18.33 (26.00); s/r: 135.2 (126.8)
Adil Rashid - ave: 7.00 (12.56); s/r: 68.3 (104.4)
David Willey - ave: 17.00 (23.66); s/r: 125.9 (139.9)

A couple of other high-profile players played fewer than 5 games - Dawid Malan (whose game stats actually pretty much matched his real-life stats) and Joe Root (whose game stats were well below real life).

With all the usual caveats and acknowledgements about form etc., it is quite telling that only one of these players had a better average in this season in the game than their real-life career figures, and one had a better strike rate, with a lot of the other figures comfortably below the real-life equivalents. The usually big-hitting Adam Lyth and my overseas star Fakhar Zaman were particular disappointments. So, while I'm really pleased to have managed a winning season and definitely feel like I'm getting better at getting results, something does still feel slightly off about the way the games unfold, which I think is in some way supported by these stats.

[ruby23]

We are taking note of this for CC21, it's a fine balance. 20 Overs is such a short match that you are less in control than in say FC or OD, that said...

- Whilst we're close-ish with maidens, the bigger problem might be (and arguably is looking at feedback above) when they happen in real life compared to in-game, I'm in discussion with Chris on this.
- Lynx54321 raised a good point with me on target run rates:

"One thing I have noticed is the difference in the targeted run rate can be quite wide between each agression setting meaning anything less than 7 is not viable unless chasing a small target. Could target run rates be pushed up so that the player has more control?

To expand on that, with a very agressive player I have the choice of targeting:

6 - 7.0 rpo
7 - 9.4 rpo
8 - 11.9 rpo

Given there are 9 agression levels only really 7 and 8 are much use to me. 6 is too slow and 9 is for chancing the arm. Quite often, especially when chasing I want this guy to look for 8 an over or so"

I think this is a good point, and again something we're looking at balance-wise for CC21.

Great to note Sureshot looking forward to CC21... On another note, could you relook at the kerning of the font in front and back of the numeral 7. It's annoying while looking at the player stats page... I usually never use 9 aggression as it invariably ends up in me losing a bucket of wickets... With the 7 & 8, I'm able to achieve anywhere between 150-170 in Normal mode and 160-190 in Easy mode playing for India... The excessive maiden overs in LO & T20 occur probably due to lack of singles. Same could be said of Tests & FC too but as you mentioned, since it's a longer match, one may not notice... Aggression levels seem pretty high in Easy mode but playing with the same team in Normal mode, it's probably just about OK...

[Sureshot]

We are taking note of this for CC21, it's a fine balance. 20 Overs is such a short match that you are less in control than in say FC or OD, that said...

- Whilst we're close-ish with maidens, the bigger problem might be (and arguably is looking at feedback above) when they happen in real life compared to in-game, I'm in discussion with Chris on this.
- Lynx54321 raised a good point with me on target run rates:

"One thing I have noticed is the difference in the targeted run rate can be quite wide between each agression setting meaning anything less than 7 is not viable unless chasing a small target. Could target run rates be pushed up so that the player has more control?

To expand on that, with a very agressive player I have the choice of targeting:

6 - 7.0 rpo
7 - 9.4 rpo
8 - 11.9 rpo

Given there are 9 agression levels only really 7 and 8 are much use to me. 6 is too slow and 9 is for chancing the arm. Quite often, especially when chasing I want this guy to look for 8 an over or so"

I think this is a good point, and again something we're looking at balance-wise for CC21.

[galvatron]

An average aggression batsman in the English domestic T20. I was chasing around 160, and as I said had the chase well in hand despite slightly tricky batting conditions. Those are interesting stats, and I certainly would expect there to be maidens in T20 - but as I've been saying, I think it's the circumstances of when they occur that I find frustrating. It just seems completely unlikely that well-set batsman who's been in quite a while, is at almost max aggression and is scoring at more than a run a ball, even if he's rated average for aggression, would block out so many dot balls at such a late stage of the innings against a bowler he's already taken runs off.

It would be interesting to see some stats about the number of dot balls in say the last 5 overs of T20 games, rather than maidens/dots in general. That's the thing that still does not quite feel right about T20 in the game.

Completely agree. Happens too often that two set batsmen are facing the bowling and there's a maiden bowled against them or an over going for one or two.

[Jobi1K]

An average aggression batsman in the English domestic T20. I was chasing around 160, and as I said had the chase well in hand despite slightly tricky batting conditions. Those are interesting stats, and I certainly would expect there to be maidens in T20 - but as I've been saying, I think it's the circumstances of when they occur that I find frustrating. It just seems completely unlikely that well-set batsman who's been in quite a while, is at almost max aggression and is scoring at more than a run a ball, even if he's rated average for aggression, would block out so many dot balls at such a late stage of the innings against a bowler he's already taken runs off.

It would be interesting to see some stats about the number of dot balls in say the last 5 overs of T20 games, rather than maidens/dots in general. That's the thing that still does not quite feel right about T20 in the game.

[Sureshot]

Jobi1K
I did some testing of in-game maidens, I used Indian 20 Over as I was able to find real world stats fairly easily. I was just skipping all matches.

Test 1: 27 maidens
Test 2: 26 maidens
Test 3: 26 maidens

In the 2020 Indian 20 Over comp there were 22 maidens.
2019 had 20 maidens
2018 had 14 maidens
2017 had 13 maidens
2016 had 18 maidens

That suggests we're a little out, but it should give you an idea of the real world numbers in that league. The older years of real world data have less relevance becuase of different players, etc.

I'd say an SR of 110 is slow, but then that depends what total you were chasing?

What aggression rating does the batsman have?

What league/comp were you playing in?

[Jobi1K]

The 9 bar aggression is a useful tool, it's not a guarantee of runs, and nor should it be. But I've had some really good success with it, moreso with settled batsmen.

I had a match earlier, Int 20 Over between Pakistan and England, Morgan and a regen were both settled, 3 4s and 2 6s in an over with 9 bars. I needed that over to win the match with 2 balls to spare. 200 plays 200 match, pretty good fun.

See this is the frustration I still have, that I was trying to get across in my messages on this thread. I'm certainly not expecting to just merrily rack up 200-odd every game - obviously that would be completely unrealistic and also not all that fun, but.... After the couple of good performances I mentioned, in one of my next games I was batting second, chasing a tricky but definitely gettable target. I had a settled batsman, on around 40, ticking along very nicely (SR around 110), had him up to 1 bar off max aggression, and then inexplicably he blocked out the 18th over for a maiden, against a bowler who'd been going for at least a run a ball in his previous overs. All momentum gone, and I lost the game by about 10 runs. It's that kind of non-scoring that just seems a bit too unrealistic and still feels like it happens too regularly to me. You just wouldn't expect a well-set aggressive batsman to block out a late-stage over in a T20 like that, and I'm not sure what else I can do as a player to avoid that happening.

Regarding playing ball-by-ball, I always play that way in T20s these days (following your advice on CC18!) and it doesn't feel like it takes too long to me. I guess everyone has their own perception of what is too long for a game!