MCG pitch is the real villain here

I DON’T like seeing players hung out to dry on what is basically the evidence of a still photo, but that’s what looks to have happened to Jimmy Anderson.

When you tour Australia, it is not just 11 cricketers you are taking on, it is an entire country, including the media. So on a rainy day when there is not much on the field to talk about, you can see why this leads the news.

If Anderson did any wrong it was to remove mud from the ball when he was not near an umpire, which is what you are supposed to do to avoid a suggestion of anything untoward.

But I would have thought cricket has bigger problems to deal with than footage of Anderson’s thumb near a ball.

The problem comes when players start digging around in the seam with a fingernail contrary to the Laws. But I do not buy the argument that bowlers should be able to do anything as long as they don’t use tools or implements.

We have seen with the Decison Review System how players quickly find a way to test a new regulation to its limits. So if you allowed them to tamper with the ball, we would soon have problems.

England were working on the ball to try to find reverse swing on a drop-in pitch offering no lateral movement.

The sides I played in were always trying to find legal ways of getting the ball to reverse, especially against sides, like Pakistan, who did it so much better.

What Anderson was doing looked legit to me, especially as his thumb was on the shiny side — which you need to get the ball to reverse.

It’s a non-story. The real focus should be what Anderson himself spoke about at the end of day one — and that’s the surface it has been played on.

Test cricket cannot survive in the Twenty20 age if it produces drop-in pitches like this, especially for such an iconic game.

Exciting Test cricket needs pitches where bowlers have the edge. Boring pitches like this are bad for the game.