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In recent weeks two low scoring Tests were played. One at Nagpur and the other at Adelaide.
The Adelaide Test was a Day-Night affair where the pink ball made its debut. The response among cricket fans to the two pitches was varied. Nagpur was a bad pitch, while Adelaide was a good pitch, albeit towards the seaming end of the spectrum. Figures as varied as Jacques Kallis, Glenn Maxwell, the editor of ESPNCricinfo , Harsha Bhogle, Rajdeep Sardesai and Michael Vaughan, all panned the pitch at Nagpur. Wasim Akram described it as an akhara and suggested that the ICC should take over pitch preparation.
Part of the criticism of the Nagpur pitch has to do with South Africa getting bowled out for 79 in their first innings. Had New Zealand wrapped up the last two Australian wickets cheaply and Australia were bowled out for 120 instead of 224 in their first innings at Adelaide, it may have caused more adverse comment about the pitch. But then again, it may not have.
The pitch at Cape Town, for example, has produced some remarkable scores in recent years. New Zealand were bowled out for 45 there in 2013. Scores of 47 all out and 96 all out were achieved on a single day of a Test in 2011. Pakistan were bowled out for 49 at Johannesburg in February. Australia were bowled out for 60 at Trent Bridge in the 2015 Ashes. New Zealand were bowled out for 68 at Lord’s in 2013. None of those wickets were considered poor. They were considered “challenging”. Whatever the contribution of the overhead conditions, the behaviour of the ball off the wicket was still such that batting sides were dismissed unusually cheaply.
Turning wickets are far more likely to be considered “bad” than seaming wickets. Cricinfo ’s Karthik Krishnaswamy provides an interesting explanation. Comparing the wickets at Trent Bridge and Nagpur, he writes:
“At Trent Bridge, Australia's batsmen were unsure which way the ball would move after it pitched. But they could trust how quickly it came to them, and the extent of its bounce. Both were true, and anything straying from a good line or length could be put away safely. In Nagpur, in addition to not knowing how much, and if at all, the ball would turn, South Africa's batsmen - and indeed India's - seldom knew if the ball was going to stop on them or skid through quickly, and whether it would jump or keep low.”
Further, “A green, seaming pitch often gets better to bat on. That is why openers are advised to give the first hour to the bowlers. In Nottingham, the entire Australia line-up lasted just beyond that first hour. When England batted, the pitch had lost quite a bit of its initial freshness. Australia's bowlers, moreover, failed to land the ball as consistently in the channel or as consistently on the seam as Broad did. England replied with 391.
A pitch that turns from the first day only gets worse to bat on. Since it is dry at the start, with no grass on its surface, there is nothing in the pitch to prevent it from crumbling rapidly under the sun and under constant bombardment by cricket balls and feet.”
This means that we consider a wicket which might arbitrarily offer one side a massive advantage for a short period of time, >a good one . It remains one of the mysteries of cricket why wickets which are fresh and lively on the first morning of a five-day game are considered good ones. Further, his claim that the wicket only deteriorates further is difficult to credit, since South Africa made the second-best score in the match in the fourth innings. There’s no evidence to suggest that the wicket actually deteriorated.
Sunil Gavaskar and Ravichandran Ashwin both suggested that the bounce would get lower and the pace would get slower as the game progressed. This is what happened. Hashim Amla and Faf du Plessis added 72 runs in 45 overs stand in that fourth innings. The fourth South African wicket fell in the 24th over. Amla was dismissed in the 70th. Does that sound to you like a pitch on which batting was impossible? An out-of-form pair survived for half the scheduled overs in a day’s play.
Further, a spinning pitch with even bounce and turn is a contradiction in terms. Spin is the result of the ball “gripping” the surface while seam is a function of the ball “kissing” the surface. This is also why fast bowlers who hit the pitch hard, or bowl cutters, tend to do well on turning tracks, as Morkel, McGrath and others have shown in India.
As opposed to this, consider a seaming wicket, on which the ball moves as much as the width of the bat (sometimes more) at more than 80 miles an hour off a good length.
Beyond a point, adjustment is impossible. In such conditions, even bowlers who otherwise lack the control to run through good sides on easier batting wickets look deadly. When India were playing at Johannesburg in 2006, I remember Pat Symcox saying on commentary very early in South Africa’s innings that “absolutely anything could happen here”. Symcox was right. Sreesanth bowled the hosts out for 84.
Why is a spinning pitch with its variations in bounce, turn and speed considered worse than a seaming pitch? After all, there is nothing inherently good or bad about either pitch. I suggest that this is because we have been conditioned to accept seaming conditions because fast bowling has dominated cricket since the 1960s.
Until the start of the 1970s, the Home team’s bowling was roughly evenly split between spinners and fast bowlers outside the Indian sub-continent. Spinners, though, dominated in India and Pakistan. Since the start of the 1970s, the spinner’s share of the Home team’s bowling in Test cricket has been declining steadily, even in India. The 2010s offer some hope of a reversal in this trend. As a result, teams playing three fast bowlers and one spinner are commonplace, but three spinners and one fast bowler tends to raise eyebrows.
This conditioning must also translate into batting techniques. Batsmen are far more unprepared to face the square turner than they are to face the green seamer. On seaming tracks, batsmen who play late and score mainly from deflections survive. The New Zealand opener Mark Richardson was a master of this style of play. An equivalent method on turning tracks is not in evidence. It must exist since batsmen have scored runs on square turners before, but it has not been seen in recent times.
It is not as if batting technique has not evolved in the past in response to turning wickets. Wickets in England in the mid-50s turned a great deal. Today some of them might have been considered bad wickets. In 1957, for instance, Sonny Ramadhin had come to England with a great reputation (having mastered the English batting in 1950 in England and in 1954 in West Indies). During that tour, he ran through England in the first innings of the first Test at Edgbaston. In England’s second innings, however, Peter May and Colin Cowdrey developed a method to counter Ramadhin by using pad play. They added 411. Ramadhin was never the same bowler again.
The current reaction to turning wickets is an artefact of recent Test history, in which the spinner has been completely marginalised outside the Indian subcontinent. For the last 40 years, Home spinners have taken only about one in four wickets, and bowl less than 30% of the overs outside the Indian subcontinent. It has become commonplace for teams to play the token spinner in most Tests. Perhaps the need of the hour is for pace and spin to find the happy equilibrium of the 1950s again.
Perhaps then we will see a very good batsman being completely squared up by a ball which moves 6 inches after pitching on a reasonably full length and a batsman wearing a fizzing off-break off a good-length on the glove, as the same type of anomaly. Today we see the former as great bowling in challenging batting conditions, while we see the latter as a batsman stuck in a hopeless gamble on a bad pitch. Perhaps batsmen will work out a way to play spin better as well.
What is a bad pitch then, you may ask? That definition has never been in doubt. A bad pitch in cricket has always been defined as a pitch which is considered dangerous. If a pitch is dangerous, the match is discontinued. Conversely, if the umpires and the two captains do not consider a pitch dangerous, it isn’t a bad pitch. It is just a different test.
