Drop-in pitch the problem as bowlers find the going tough

MCG surface not set up to produce good cricket Smith and Warner offer stubborn resistance

England were faced with the longest and hardest of slogs on day five, on the lowest and slowest of pitches. They had approximately 70 overs in which to dismiss Australia a second time which, if the timing of tea were right, would leave them 28 overs for knocking off a target.

Australia, like England, had been accused of not eking out enough draws in recent years – only three in the last two – so their captain and vice-captain, Steve Smith and David Warner, were intent on re-defining the culture of their team, as dogged fighters. Warner moved to his most cautious 50 off 161 balls, and Smith was even more defensive, as they brought up a 100 partnership and tried to grind England’s pace bowlers into the ground – James Anderson, their strike bowler, having bowled 40 overs before day five.

The Melbourne Cricket Club is the most prestigious cricket club in Australia, but the pitches at this MCC’S headquarters are no more conducive to good cricket than those at Lord’s. Too many of Victoria’s home games, like Middlesex’s, are bore draws as the ball neither bounces nor turns. The fourth Test was brought to a standstill on the fourth afternoon when, after Cook had carried his bat for 244 without facing another ball, Warner and Smith were pinned down to five runs off eight overs.

England’s pace bowlers, sensing the win that would redeem their tour, found a tinge of reverseswing; England’s fielders formed a stifling ring and dived to save every run. Still, when Australia’s two finest batsmen cannot get the ball off the square, something is profoundly amiss – with that square.

A generation ago, this MCC had to come up with some sort of a solution. Aussie Rules, as it is popularly known, was devised by the MCC to keep their cricketers fit during the off-season, but all their running around in football boots damaged the cricket pitches and by the 1980s the highlight of Test matches here was the unplayable shooter. So 19 years ago the first drop-in pitches were installed at the MCG.

This strategy has not quite worked out. The trouble with a drop-in pitch is that it resembles one or two of Bertie Wooster’s chums: a bit lacking in depth. However well watered and rolled, the pitch is in its tray during the cricket off-season, when it is dropped into the MCG square it does not compact well enough with the soil below to achieve pace and bounce.

If it were a drop-in pitch flown in from the old-time Waca in Perth, composed largely of clay, the games might be livelier. But Melbourne soil does not wear and tear.

Don Bradman used to complain about the square being so hard on the feet. Moreover, pace bowlers do not create footmarks or rough in their follow-through for the spinners to exploit, as if it were a slab of concrete in Pakistan.

Warner, before this game, had been cruising along happily in Test matches with a scoring rate of 76 per 100 balls. Throttled by Anderson, Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes, Warner scraped along at 28 per 100 balls before rain intervened on the fourth afternoon. Warner took his duties as vice-captain seriously, as Australia were 164 runs behind after Cook had vacated the creases, and he did not give it away, suppressing his ego. It is not much of a spectacle, though, when Warner tries to block like Cook.

Smith joined Warner after Cameron Bancroft had inside-edged a reverse-swinger from Woakes into his stumps, and Usman Khawaja edged Anderson’s reverse-swinger to be caught behind. Keeping wicket has been a back-breaking job on this pitch, with most balls going through to the keeper at ankle height, except of course for the bouncers at England’s tailenders. Smith, a latter day Bradman, was reduced to a rate of 37 per 100 balls. This Ashes series has been far too negative to be ranked as one of the better ones. The ultimate victors have been Australia and the analysts of both sides who have worked out the scoring areas of every player and used up all their ideas on fieldplacings to deny them.

Only when Smith and Mitchell Marsh went on the go in Perth, and Broad had his thrash with Cook, has the batting broken the shackles.

From the start of Australia’s first innings in Brisbane, Root has set a deep fielder on either side for Warner. Even here, with a lead of 164, and rain threatening, England soon set one slip – and two boundary fielders. But it is not as if Warner edged anything through the slips, let alone at catchable height, so who is to say that Root was wrong?

It was the same when Moeen Ali went on – mid-off and mid-on were placed deep to concede the single and forbid the four.

Like in a limited-overs game of 30 or 40 years ago, but not today, containment was all.