Australia v Pakistan Third Test: What to expect from SCG pitch and Sydney’s weather

Four of the past seven SCG Tests have resulted in draws – with the Sydney curator eager to avoid a repeat of one pitch which was savaged by a former Australian captain as a ‘disgrace’.

SCG curator Adam Lewis says he is expecting this week’s Test pitch to turn despite Australia’s unusual decision not to add a second spinner to its squad for the traditional New Year’s clash.

Lewis meanwhile said he had heeded the lessons from a controversial Sheffield Shield clash earlier in the season in which the Sydney deck was the subject of criticism from former Test skipper Tim Paine.

The Aussies on Sunday named an unchanged 13-man squad for the third Test against Pakistan, opting against including backup spinner Todd Murphy to complement Nathan Lyon.

While often not including a second specialist tweaker in its final XI in Sydney, Australia has tended to at least call up another twirler. The Aussies last year paired Lyon with Ashton Agar, although the latter’s influence was nullified by a pitch that spent considerable time under covers due to the notorious Sydney weather.

The famous SCG pitch, pictured before the Ashes in 2022 – but what will be served up this week? Picture: Phil Hillyard

While Lewis would not be drawn on whether he was surprised that Australia opted against calling up another spinner, he said he expected the SCG pitch to deteriorate and turn in the back half of the match, provided Mother Nature played ball.

The forecast is promising, with little rain forecast across the five days of the match, a welcome change from the trend of much of the past decade.

Six of the past seven SCG Tests have been rain-affected, with four of those matches being drawn.

“We’re looking really good. Weather’s looking better now, which is good. We’ve been worried about that. So looks like it’s clearing up a bit. So now we’re on track,” Lewis told this masthead.

“Look it normally does, the SCG is traditional spin but it normally comes in sort of a little bit later in the game and as last year the weather just took that out, took that away so this will look if we get the right weather, I think it’ll definitely take spin.

An all too common sight in recent years: the SCG Test being hammered by mother nature. Picture: AFP

“(We) just (need) dry weather. We just don’t want any rain and we don’t want it under covers. The last few years we’ve lost nearly a day and a half each year. Wear and tear through the game is vital. So you get the bowlers running through and the Bulli soil which has a natural dusty characteristic to it so that once the bowlers come through and create dusty areas, that’s when it seems to spin a lot more.”

Post-season tinkering in 2023 has provided hope of more penetration for th quicks too.

“We’re hoping for a bit more pace. We were lucky to redo the square coming out of the season last year before going into winter. And we took about 30mm off and took some old Bulli soil out with all organic matter and replaced it with fresh Bulli and then returfed it. So we’ve noticed so far that we’re getting could carry in it, which is sort of what we’ve been targeting.”

However there is a balance to be struck. Twenty-four wickets fell in a day of NSW’s Shield win over Tasmania in November, prompting Paine to label the wicket “embarrassing” and “a disgrace” on SEN.

Lewis said the Shield match had been a victim of the fixture but was optimistic about avoiding a repeat.

“Yeah, we had a really tight turnaround from the women’s (Big Bash) game. And it’s not ideal to have a game two days before a Shield pitch,” Lewis said.

“And we just couldn’t get enough water back into the actual wicket itself with the adverse weather conditions that we had, so we sort of took some learnings from that. Because the Shield started and then the cracks opened up. And I think (Chris) Tremain basically just found a nice crack, and he just kept hitting the same spot.”