Promise of SCG turn
SCG curator Adam Lewis is expecting this week’s Test pitch to turn despite Australia’s unusual decision not to add a second spinner to its squad for the traditional New Year’s clash.
Lewis said he had heeded the lessons from a controversial Sheffield Shield clash earlier in the season when former Test skipper Tim Paine criticised the Sydney deck.
The Aussies on Sunday named an unchanged 13-man squad for the third Test against Pakistan, opting no to include back-up spinner Todd Murphy to complement Nathan Lyon.
While often not including a second specialist tweaker in its final XI in Sydney, Australia has tended to at least call up another twirler.
The Aussies last year paired Lyon with Ashton Agar, although the latter’s influence was nullified by a pitch that
spent considerable time under covers due to the notorious Sydney weather.
While Lewis would not be drawn on whether he was surprised that Australia opted against calling up another spinner, he said he expected the SCG pitch to deteriorate and turn in the back half of the match, provided Mother Nature played ball.
There is a promising forecast of little rain across the five days in a welcome change from the trend for much of the past decade.
Six of the past seven SCG Tests have been rain-affected and four of those were drawn.
“We’re looking really good,” Lewis said. “Weather’s looking better now, which is good.
“We’ve been worried about that. So looks like it’s clearing up a bit, so now we’re on track.
“The SCG is traditional spin but it normally comes in sort of a little bit later in the game.
“Last year the weather just took that out, took that away. If we get the right weather, it will definitely take spin.
“(We) just (need) dry weather. We just don’t want any rain and we don’t want it under covers.
“The last few years we’ve lost nearly a day and a half each year.
“Wear and tear through the game is vital, so you get the bowlers running through.
“The Bulli soil, which has a natural dusty characteristic to it, once the bowlers come through and create dusty areas, that’s when it seems to spin a lot more.”
Tinkering after last season has provided hope of more penetration for the quicks, too.
“We’re hoping for a bit more pace,” Lewis said.
“We were lucky to redo the square coming out of the season last year before going into winter.
“And we took about 30mm off and took some old Bulli soil out with all organic matter and replaced it with fresh Bulli and then returfed it.
“So we’ve noticed so far that we’re getting good carry in it, which is sort of what we’ve been targeting.”
However, there is a balance to be struck. Twenty-four wickets fell in a day during NSW’s win over Tasmania in the Shield in November, which prompted Paine to say on radio that the pitch was “embarrassing” and a “disgrace”.
Lewis said the Shield match had been a victim of the fixtures but was optimistic about avoiding a repeat.
“Yeah, we had a really tight turnaround from the women’s (Big Bash) game,” Lewis said.
“It’s not ideal to have a game two days before a Shield pitch.
“We just couldn’t get enough water back into the actual wicket itself with the adverse weather conditions that we had, so we sort of learnt some things from that because the Shield started and then the cracks opened up.
“I think (Chris) Tremain basically just found a nice crack and he just kept hitting the same spot.”