‘I’ve seen worse’: Bowling greats say Gabba pitch concerns overblown

The mental and technical approach of batsmen who struggled in the two-day Gabba Test have been questioned by former bowling greats Jason Gillespie, Merv Hughes, Geoff Lawson and Daniel Vettori after Australia’s six-wicket win.

Gillespie, now coach of South Australia and the Adelaide Strikers, suggested most batsmen had been mentally defeated by the green colour of the pitch and the quality of the opposing pace attack before they went out to bat.

“I just wonder in both camps, whether the look of the pitch and a few [balls] moving around early defeated both batting sites with the mental game,” Gillespie told the Herald and The Age.

“Only the people within those two dressing rooms will know what the talk was around. Some of the Australians came out after day one saying, ‘That was some of toughest conditions I’ve ever encountered in Test cricket’. The South Africans were talking about it potentially being dangerous.

“You just wonder if the mind games ... were they defeated purely by looking at the surface and seeing a couple of the balls maybe do a bit, carry through a bit more than they expected, or just seamed a little bit more than they expected?

Most pointed to the attitude of Travis Head, with Gillespie describing him as “the point of difference” between the sides.

Mitchell Starc celebrates taking his 300th Test wicket during the Brisbane Test.Credit: Getty Images

Head was player of the match with a dashing first-innings 92, and shared a crucial 117-run partnership with Steve Smith (36) for the fourth wicket.

South African captain Dean Elgar asked the umpires if the Gabba pitch was unsafe as the first Test finished inside two days with 34 wickets falling.

“I said, ‘How long does it go on for until it potentially is unsafe?’” Elgar revealed after the match, claiming he did not receive an answer from the umpires. He pointed out that Proteas paceman Anrich Nortje was bowling short balls that were flying over the wicketkeeper’s head to the boundary. There were 19 extras, 15 wides and four byes, in Australia’s winning second-innings total of 4-35.

Gillespie disagreed with Elgar’s assessment.

Dean Elgar was dismissed for three during the opening day of the first Test in Brisbane.Credit: Getty

“I think these calls of a dangerous and disgraceful pitch, they’re a bit far off the mark,” Gillespie said. “I think we saw some pretty good bowling on a surface that was helpful. And I thought we saw some pretty poor batting, to be perfectly honest.

“I thought Travis Head was outstanding. He just went out there and played aggressively.”

New Zealand spinning great Vettori, now Australia’s bowling coach, said he had “seen worse.”

“It was really tough conditions and once in a while you don’t mind that. As a bowling group you don’t mind to see it,” Vettori said. “Because of the nature of how good those two bowling attacks were it probably embellishes it a little bit.

Former New Zealand spinning great Daniel Vettori is now bowling coach of Australia.Credit: Getty Images

“You wouldn’t want to play on it every day, but I think for the occasional Test matches it’s not the worst thing.”

Hughes said he was “jealous” of the opportunity the current bowlers had to operate on such a green pitch, and suggested the opening batsmen in his day, Mark Taylor and Geoff Marsh, had to confront similar conditions at times against the might of the West Indies during the late ’80s and early ’90s.

“You want to contest between bat and ball and both teams have very good pace bowling lineups,” Hughes said. “South Africa had a bit of an iffy batting lineup and our guys struggled a bit, but Travis Head and Steve Smith proved if you were positive, aggressive, then you could score runs on it.”

Lawson claimed making pitches was an art with a “little bit of science thrown in” that left groundsmen at the mercy of the weather.

“That’s actually a good thing. We don’t want to have homogenous wickets. Having variations is terrific,” Lawson said, but claimed all the Brisbane Test pitches he played on were brown, not green.

“Obviously there was too much moisture in that wicket, particularly when you’ve got bowling attacks of that standard.”

Lawson also questioned the batters’ technique in difficult conditions.

“We’ve got modern batting techniques, where everybody plays with their bat a long way from their pads, so they can hit the ball further,” he said.

“Bats and pads aren’t close together anymore, which is how the game used to be played when it was seaming around.”

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