Shield gives pink ball sceptics more ammunition

There remains an air of scepticism about the pink ball which the first round of Sheffield Shield did little to dispel.

Mitchell Starc with the pink ball after taking 8-73 runs at Adelaide Oval

While Australia’s Test players are warming to the idea of day-night Tests there remains an air of scepticism about the behaviour of the pink ball which the first round of Sheffield Shield did little to dispel.

Getting a bead on the ball and its peculiarities is difficult, however, with bowlers unimpressed as a rule and batsmen equally, if not more, suspicious of it.

It was not a shield round for batsmen with only Usman Khawaja managing to manufacture a century. Most of the focus is on Adelaide which will host its third day-night Test from December 2.

Having over-egged the pudding by leaving too much grass on the wicket in the Test against New Zealand in 2015-16 curator Damian Hough took a few extra millimetres off the top for last season’s match against South Africa which pushed the game into the fourth day. Most were satisfied with that result.

Reports from the match between South Australia and NSW suggest he trimmed the drop-in a little shorter still.

Players said the ball struggled to cope as it got older on the third day despite the fact the recently laid square was heavily grassed. It did not swing too much conventionally but when the paint and lacquer peeled away Mitchell Starc made the most of almost-unplayable reverse, tearing through the local batsmen on his way to an eight-wicket haul.

His performance was familiar to anyone who has seen him with an ageing white ball.

Even with that little grass on the wicket the ball still gripped and seamed — Trent Copeland cashed in with six wickets in the first innings.

“Callum Ferguson made a few comments last night about it might have been a bit more of an abrasive surface than it was,” Starc said on arrival in Sydney yesterday. “He mentioned that the grass might have been a bit shorter than it has been in the past.

“We still found that leather came away from the quarter seam which probably caused it to reverse a bit as well. It still goes soft and it does make it a bit more hard work for the bowlers once it does go soft but we found a way to get 20 wickets and it was a great result for the Blues.”

Starc, who was playing his first first-class game since returning from injury, claims his preparation for the Ashes was going well. “It’s gotten better each time I’ve bowled and the more I bowled through the match, the rhythm felt better and better,” he said.

Starc will play the match against WA this weekend at Sydney’s Hurstville Oval but rest from the third shield match.

“No reason to change the plan now. We’ll get ready for the game against the WACA and then I guess we’ll talk to the medical staff and that sort of thing pushing on,” he said.

The behaviour of the pink ball varies according to the venue and wicket. In WA the local bowlers were devastating in the last innings, bowling out Tasmania for 63 with the ball when it was still new. It was the visitors’ lowest ever shield score.

Last year when WA played NSW at the WACA Ground the surface was abrasive and the ball went flat early, providing little swing. Bowlers complained that batsmen could swing through the line and if they did nick one it wouldn’t carry because it was so soft.

Khawaja’s two innings in the match for Queensland last week suggest that he was a class above most people in the game at the Gabba against Victoria.

David Warner’s 83 from 139 balls was also the performance of a player with a different skill set to most of those around him. The normally free-flowing batsman struggled to get the soft ball off the lush square after the first few overs, but his application won plaudits.

Tasmania, meanwhile, was scrambling to calm the critics after losing the match in Perth by more than 300 runs. The state had undergone a wholesale change of staff over the winter and new chief executive, Nick Cummins, asked that people be patient.

“When you go through a period of transformation you occasionally hit potholes and it can be a bit deflating when you feel like you’re not making progress,” Cummins said. “It’s really about building a culture of accountability and performance, dispelling the idea that near enough is good enough.”

Cummins said changes to the team were not necessarily the solution and said new coach Adam Griffith was on board.

“I think it’s a little bit deeper than making changes to the playing XI for the next game, it’s spending the time over the season to look at who has got the hunger to play at this level and to perform consistently,” he said.

“Adam understands as well as I do that this is a thousand-day journey and we’re only 100-200 days into that journey and it’s going to take some time to deliver .”