Beefy wants pitch doctored!

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by Lemming

Or are you the only person in the world who has this point of view?

Do you ever stop to listen to the chat (and especially the luch-time chat) on TMS or Channel 4? It's common enough on either to hear folk who know what they are talking about arguing very cogently that the game has swung far, far too far in the direction of the batsmen.

Tennis has a problem: racket technology is allowing thugs like Roddick to make a mockery of the game, leaving artists less capable than Federer with an impossible challenge; Golf has a problem: technological improvements to clubs and balls are allowing the big hitters to make a mockery of great golf courses and are making it tough for great players with no great length (like Donald) to compete; Cricket has it's own big problem: pitch preparation (since the covering of wickets) has advanced to the point that stand and deliver thugs and flat track bullies are able to all but eclipse more accomplished players who bring more to the game AND are creating very negative pressures on bowling coaches (who are moving ever more to extremes of pace, turn and discipline at the expense of the adventurousness and variety embodied by the likes of Bedser and Underwood).

Same story, different sports: the "jocks" are taking over...

[Lemming]

Originally Posted by Rachael

Do you ever stop to listen to the chat (and especially the luch-time chat) on TMS or Channel 4? It's common enough on either to hear folk who know what they are talking about arguing very cogently that the game has swung far, far too far in the direction of the batsmen.

I don't believe you, I want proof! I watch channel four and haven't really noticed anyone making a big point about the game - on the whole - being in favour of the batsmen. Indeed, this last pitch at Edgbaston was made for batting, but the commentators/analyists didn't really say anything regarding how the pitch was unfair and certainly no-one lowered themselves to suggest the groundsman should "be shot". They admitted it was in the batsmen's favour, yes, but not that it was unfair.

Although I understand you are not likely to be the only person in the world with this viewpoint, I ask you again to give a few examples where a current top bowler has complained and expressed the opinion that the pitches - on the whole - favour the batsmen too much. I certainly don't agree that it is a big issue in cricket at the moment.

Also, it's all very well deriding some current batsmen as 'flat-track bullies' and illogically assuming flat tracks magically give runs to batsmen. The fact is, players like Hayden (who admittedly is a bully, but scores more runs than most others) bat on the same track as every other batsman and if they can't bully as well as Hayden then they won't score as many runs. Runs are the important thing, I'm afraid, not looking like a batsman.

[Lemming]

Originally Posted by Rachael

Tennis has a problem: racket technology is allowing thugs like Roddick to make a mockery of the game, leaving artists less capable than Federer with an impossible challenge; Golf has a problem: technological improvements to clubs and balls are allowing the big hitters to make a mockery of great golf courses and are making it tough for great players with no great length (like Donald) to compete...

With respect it's not only Roddick who uses a technological racket, or Tiger Woods a technological golf club. It's all relative in such sports. Tiger Woods would always hit a golf ball farther than Luke Donald, Roddick will always serve faster than Henman. The game evolves relative to each and every player and if they can't keep up with it than it's sort of tough.

I can actually see where you are coming from, you prefer to see touch and technique overcome power. But my point is that the sports are what they are and it's as simple as that. We have to accept that and then - with that in mind - decide whether we want to continue following such sports. The thing is we can't go back as no-one wants to!

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by Lemming

The thing is we can't go back as no-one wants to!

I don't know that many people want to go "back" (though you do hear even guys at the top like MacEnroe talking seriously about wooden rackets). The goal is to sort out the regulations to ensure that the ideals around which the game is based are not lost... and in tennis that's a very, very big debate: the game is at it's best when players use variations on serve and a variety of very different groundstrokes to create opportunities for approach shots, net play, drop shots, lobs and the like... and when you see a player like Henman struggling in a sport he would have largely dominated in a previous era... and see just how awesomely Federer has to play to beat a robot like Roddick... you see, very clearly, the scale of the problem.

You do hear the same sort of talk in cricket... and in part it's about more than just pitches: the bats have a bit to answer for as well (you could crack big shots with the old fashioned bats if you timed it right... but mistimed blocks didn't scoot to the long on boundary).

The biggest discussions in cricket seem to me to revolve around swing bowling.. or rather it's dearth. Trueman was pointing to the chest on actions preferred by the coaches as the reason during one recent lunch-hour slot... but what he didn't go on to say was that such actions are preferred as much for their mechanical, robotic nature as for any good reason to do with limiting stresses on the body - the pitches are such that coaches are putting a greater premium on robotic actions in the hope of producing bowlers as disciplined as McGrath... where on uncovered wickets they pushed for a classical action with a Wasim-Akram like wrist position in the hope of producing a bowler who could swing the ball BOTH ways (as was quite common when actions were less chest on).

The other routinely discussed matter that can trace it's origins back to pitches is the great finger spin debate. It's familiar enough: with covered wickets favouring the batsmen.... aggressive finger-spinners are dying out; the move is towards players like Boje, Gayle, Giles, Batty, Vettori and so on... to guys whose strengths are containment and batting.

I don't think the answer is uncovering the wickets again... but the example of the Rose Bowl shows that we can now produce pitches as interesting as uncovered pitches without actually uncovering them.. and the fact that Zoyza was tying the Aussies in knots with swing in Sri Lanka... and that Pathan and co excelled with swiging deliveries in Pakistan not so long back... and the emergence of medium pace swing bowlers IN Pakistan... suggest that all things are possible.

We could get off to a good start in this country very simply... as is commonly mentioned.. by digging out the Surrey Loam: worst stuff ever exported from the SE.

It's the political will that matters: when those in charge develop some basic confidence in the idea of a genuine contest between bat and ball and finally cotton on to the fact that perfectly good bowlers like Collymore, Pedro Colins, Hoggard, Zoysa, Umar Gul and so on can't deliver that without a bit more help from the pitches it will happen.

I hope so anyway.. otherwise we'll be seeing an ever growing army of guys like Sami, Nel and Tino Best.. who just ain't in the same league as bowlers but who are probably more useful on wickets where there's no lateral movement to be had.

[DaveGillespie]

Rachael I would have to disagree with you here.

The perfect test pitch in the opinion of myself, Geoffrey Boycott and, doubtless, the Boycott matriarch herself is one which favours the batsmen 60/40. Seamers who bowl a good line and length whether that be back of a length or pitched up and bowl with good seam position will find a hint of lateral movement and slight uneven bounce from day 2 or 3, increasing as the match goes onward. Finger Spinners will be able to bowl tightly in the first innings and exploit rough, variable bounce and increasing turn off the pitch in the second innings. Batsmen who apply themselves, show good technique and play proper cricket shots should find reward in weight of runs.

Now, if this doesn't describe English test pitches over the last 18 months, especially last summer, I don't know what does. Lords, both in the recent Ashes test and last year vs WI and NZ showed exactly those characteristics I have detailed. Batsmen who apply themselves will score runs (Pietersen, Trescothick & Strauss in England's second innings), bowlers who ask questions of the batsmen whilst remaining disciplined (Harmison, McGrath and Warne) will take wickets.

You make out the two recent pitches as if they were as bad as the St Johns pitch on which Lara scored 400 without trouble, or some subcontinental featherbed. There was definitely help in the Lords and Edgbaston pitches for bowlers who bent their back and realised how to bowl correctly thereon, similarly there were runs for batsmen who played properly. It just so happens that no-one did, and to not have seen a single test hundred on the two pitches we have had so far is an embarrassment to both batting lineups.

I would say that we do need the occasional green top or trampoline like strip in Test cricket though; such pitches make for entertaining cricket and even out bowler's stats in these days of railway sleeper bats and front foot no-ball laws.

[Notts Exile]

Originally Posted by Rachael

The best of the rest of the series to date: Warne's mesmeric control of England's batsmen at Edgbaston prior to the late slogging that screwed up what had been quite awesome figures. Again... bugger all in the way of runs.. but sensational cricket.

This would be the very same spell where KP hit him foir two sixes in one over and was later wrongly given out. The cat and mouse aspect of that period of play was superb, but that was because someone was attempting to score runs of him - attack and counter-attack.

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by DaveGillespie

Lords, both in the recent Ashes test and last year vs WI and NZ showed exactly those characteristics I have detailed.

I certainly don't have a problem with the Lords pitch in that it DID do enough to allow not just McGrath but also Harmison and Warne to pose real questions... my only quibble being that those were great bowlers bowling superbly: I have to ask myself how often, in modern Test cricket, are we treated to quite such riches...

So that was a fine track.. albeit one that required the most formidable ability level on the part of the bowlers to really make life tough for the batsmen.

My point would be that such tracks should really mark the batsman-friendly extreme of the spectrum... not the bowler friendly extreme: in the real world Test cricket has to get by with bowlers like Pedro Collins and Matthew Hoggard... with Zoysa and Langvedt... with Balaji and Gul... with the likes of Chris Martin. Goign back.. it's had to get by with the likes of Dominick Cork, Phil Defreitas and Martin Bicknell. These are ALL good bowlers... better, in many, many ways, than speedsters like Nel, Sami, Flintoff, Best and so on... but they NEED the sort of lateral movement that uncovered pitches provided... and cricket's the loser when they get caned out of the attacks and then replaced by 90mph merchants with less mastery of lateral movement.

The flip side is this: Lords was a pitch on which the limitations of assorted players were exposed by great bowling.. but on which less than great bowling would have seen guys like Tresco prosper... but pitches like the one at Edgbaston just pander to the technically flawed: not even McGrath could have exploited player's technical failings at Edgbaston... and Gillespie and Kasprowicz certainly weren't up to it.

You need the odd test wicket where only the very best bowlers can thrive... but you only need it when you've got absolutely sensational attacks on either side: the rest of the time... a typical Rose Bowl pitch would be a better bet.

[Clive Dunn]

That seems a very different way of looking at things Rachael - to hark back to the halycyon days of Phil Defreitas and Gladstone Small opening the bowling for England seems to massive step backwards. Uncovered pitches gave cheap wickets to less talented bowlers, place 3 balls out of 6 in generally the right place and hope it did something. Of course the second those bowlers played on a decent track they'd be bowling the same 3 good balls which wouldn't do much due to the nature of the pitch, and the 3 bad balls would get hit all over the park.

It seems to me that the battle between bat and ball in this series has been very even, bat well and you can make runs, bowl well and you can get wickets. Edgbaston was a batsmen friendly pitch early on, but the only reason England scored 400 in a day was that the Aussies bowled really badly. Are you really saying it would have been a better game if the Aussies had bowled badly but still got wickets regularly because of the pitch ?

[Notts Exile]

Originally Posted by Rachael

... a typical Rose Bowl pitch would be a better bet.

The Rose Bowl pitch is, allegedly, improving. However, it is not fit for Test Match cricket. The first two Tests have lasted into the fourth day, what you're suggesting may see two day Tests in England !

[Rachael]

OK, the Aussie bowlers didn't focus on bowling wicket to wicket on a decent length.. and by dropping short or bowling their "normal" line well wide off off stump they just gave the England batsmen room to swing their arms.... but to be quite honest.. on that pitch, Gilespie and Kasprowicz at their best.. or Hoggard and Jones at their best.. would have toiled in vain on day one.

Do we really want to get to a point where it's not worth considering a bowler who's less than 6'4" tall? Where the ability to bowl a heavy ball, short of a length, from a great height at 90mph and straight (like a ball machine) is valued more than the ability to pitch the ball up, swing it either way (and real swing, not the reverse stuff)?

If an attack of Hoggard, Zoysa, Pedro Collins and Balaji had been at the last two Tests it would have got murdered... and to little effect... whereas a far less talented attack of Best, Sami, Lee and Nel would have been fairly effective: that's just ridiculous!