Originally posted by citizenerased
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The thing about 'weaknesses' is they aren't strictly weak areas. A batsman with a strong legside preference may like the ball pitched at him in that area (think Ponting) but is still comfortable on the offside, often smacking off-side balls through to the legside a la Ponting's pulls and Steve Smith today of Australia. We wouldn't necessarily say 'the offside is a weak area for these batsmen' just that they predominantly look towards/eat up anything going on that leg side. I think too many people see 'strong XX' and assumes that it means the opposite is a weakpoint. Certainly, this *may* very well be true for tailenders and bowlers, though if you see you're bowling to Monty Panesar and he has a 'strong front foot' you wouldn't necessary pepper him with short balls as he's useless on that front foot anyway!
The purpose of 'weaknesses' is to target those areas a batsman may not quite prefer to have to deal with, maybe pushing him a bit out of his comfort zone. That still has to be managed carefully however, as if you bowl there too often then they'll get used to that sort of ball.
Until Cricket Captain actually implements something like scouting where a scout can say categorically: "This batsman looks suspeciable to the short ball" or "His batting technique leaves a gap our spinners could exploit" it's best to just consider the preferences as just that and stick to a standard line and length 99% of the time. Personally, I think CC should be improving in this area; like the above scouting and stuff as it would REALLY open the game up for proper cricket and bowling tactics - on top of allowing us, the player, to team build and train to eliminate weaknesses and such. Alas!
As for your final question - yes, I'd avoid defensive batsmen in One Day games - They *may* have their value in very cloudy, wet weather opening the batting if you are prepared to 'grind' the opening 10, but personally I stick to aggressive and higher batsmen in the one day format.
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