Preparing a cricket ground can NEVER be a science, so cut SCG SOME SLACK
Derek Pringle writes of his surprise that Sydney’s iconic Test venue should be so poorly rated as a venue
News that Australia’s State captains have voted the Sydney Cricket Ground the worst first-class venue in Australia, in terms of pitches and outfield, has come as a surprise to those of us who still revere its charms as a cricket ground.
While other venues have undergone “stadiumisation” with a view to becoming generic multi-purpose spaces for anything that can attract a crowd of over five thousand, the SCG has stayed faithful to cricket.
Shock and horror, then, that it should be found wanting in those things that count most towards perpetuating a good contest between bat and ball. The findings come after the pitches used in domestic cricket during the 2016/17 season were rated for seam, bounce and spin and the outfields for how quickly the ball travelled to the boundary. The WACA, soon to be defunct for international matches, came top, the SCG bottom.
Now this is where it gets contentious on account of who did the judging. Steve Smith, captain of the New South Wales Blues, gave the SCG a poor rating after his team were trounced by Victoria by 198 runs. His assessment, though, was contradicted by the opposing captain, the match referee, as well as the fact that Victoria made over 500 in the first innings. But he is also Australia’s captain and highly regarded by the powers that be, so his view inevitably held sway.
Cricket Australia say that their ideal for a day’s cricket, and we are talking red ball stuff here, would be for conditions that allow 10 wickets to fall and for 300 runs to be scored. Given that Steve Waugh, Australia’s Test captain either side of the Millennium, urged his teams to score at four runs an over 15 years ago, that strikes me as a bit conservative.
As for the SCG’s poor outfield marks, accrued due to its relative slowness compared to other venues, there is a view, proposed by among others Barry Richards, one of the greatest batsmen to have drawn breath, that too many boundaries are being scored. Richards’ argument is that batsmen should be pushed more, physically, when playing lengthy innings and one way to do this would be to make them run more of their runs. Already rarities in one-day cricket, twos and threes are in decline in longer form cricket, too. Slower outfields, as well as bigger boundaries, would address that.
Compared to outfields, pitch preparation is a delicate, inexact science, even in a place like Australia where summer heat provides decent temperatures for baking pitches. As a guide, Cricket Australia have issued a four-prong directive to curators (being gender neutral they don’t call them groundsmen): that pitches should provide a balance between bat and ball;
Already rarities in one-day cricket, twos and threes are in decline in longer form cricket too. Slower outfields, as well as bigger boundaries, would address that
preserve the unique characteristics of each venue; promote entertaining cricket; and showcase the skills of all players.
Achieving such a varied brief is tricky even in a perfect climate. Pitches are exploited to different degrees by the varying talent that plays on them. For instance, leaving a good covering of grass will help most playing surfaces stay bound together and add pace and bounce, all things that should help batsmen score more quickly.
But let loose somebody like Glenn McGrath or Richard Hadlee in such conditions, two of the best exponents of seam bowling in history, and a very different outcome will emerge as they make the ball dart this way then that.
Another problem is trying to apply a general guide to something that can prove to be an anomaly. It is like wine vintages. The consensus is to talk in terms of good and bad vintages but these are only broad guides. Some experts caution this, saying that the distinction should be refined right down to good bottles and bad, both being present in a single case of wine let alone a whole vintage. Cricket pitches are the same as was shown at Fenner’s earlier this season when Cambridge MCCU played Nottinghamshire.
I watched the first session of play and the ball turned sharply. The Notts batsmen had to work hard for their runs and needed skill to survive, which is how it should be. At lunch, they’d only lost one wicket but that did not prevent the umpires informing Chris Scott, the Cambridge coach, that they would be marking the pitch as poor, following an ECB directive that pitches should not turn significantly on the first day of a match.
There were reasons for the ball turning. The pitch had been under water a few days earlier after heavy rain and was still damp when Notts decided to bat first. The ball was gripping due to that, not because the surface was breaking up because it was too dry. In any case it made for a good spectacle and while Luke Chapman, one of two offspinners on show finished with 6-78, Notts were bowled out for 339 in 101 overs – which more or less fits Cricket Australia’s criteria for the ultimate day’s cricket.
What is more is that none of the Notts players or coaches complained. As one of their bowlers observed: “How are English batsmen, or spin bowlers for that matter, going to be able to hold their own in places like India if we punish pitches like this?” It is a good point.
I didn’t name the player due to my own experiences of feeling the wrath of the governing body after giving my two’penneth about similar directives back in 1990. That season, readers will recall, the TCCB changed two things; they brought in a ball where the seam had been much reduced in size and they issued a directive for all teams playing first-class cricket to produce “strawcoloured pitches”. Scores rocketed as a result, the farcical apogee being a game at the Oval where Lancashire made 863 in reply to Surrey’s 707-9 declared, the game fizzling out into a draw.
During an interview with a journalist I pointed out that it was a bit of a cock-up as the TCCB had introduced two variables, so they wouldn’t know whether it was the “new” ball or the “straw-coloured” pitches which was producing all the runs.
His paper quoted me as saying: “It is a typical TCCB cock-up,” and I was promptly fined £750.
Pitches are the single most important factor in creating good cricket but one of the most complex. While few desire the bland chief-executives’ pitches which go the distance but produce dull cricket, solutions are not simple. In a field where one player’s belter is another’s bad dream, standardisation, unless we go down the unsatisfactory and manufactured route of drop-in pitches, is nigh on impossible, as the SCG Trust will no doubt be pointing out.