Grounds have associated legends and peculiar characteristics. The WACA’s “deck of death” in Perth, loved by fast bowlers everywhere; the Lord’s slope; the graveyard that was the Rec in Antigua, home to two world-record individual scores and a great fast bowler for a groundsman. Headingley? “Always look up at the clouds, not down at the pitch” is the dictum for captains at the toss. Red soil at night? Spinners’ delight.
Judging from the comments under the final-day match report from Chennai this week, readers are similarly besotted. No matter that India scored more than 600 runs, and no matter the view of The Times’ correspondent, our readers would not be moved: overwhelmingly, they felt it was an unsuitable pitch. No doubt if allowed, supporters would have gathered around at lunchtime, rows deep, staring at the 22 yards like an ancient heirloom, as they do in England during the summer months.
There is a reason for this infatuation: few sports are as impacted by conditions as cricket. The pitch affects everything. Selection: two spinners, three or none? Four seamers or a balanced side? Strategy: shall we bowl first or last? Defend with our field settings or attack? Catchers in front of the wicket or behind? Conditions, by and large, dictate how players think and operate and as they change from day to day, so must players adapt.
There are, to my mind, only two kinds of unacceptable surface, at either end of the spectrum. One end of it might be represented by the famous photo here of Bosser Martin with his heavy roller, named “Bosser’s Pet”. Mike Selvey, the former England bowler and cricket correspondent of The Guardian, reminded me of this photograph this week, when we were chatting about the pitch in Chennai, and the image is too good not to use.
Bosser was the groundsman at the Oval in 1938 when, as the scoreboard suggests, England scored a mountain of runs on a pitch with all the life extracted from it. England went on to win the match, but few supporters would want to sit through an innings of 903 these days. Bosser would roll the life out of his pitches, and batsmen, such as Len Hutton, who made 364, prospered. I played in a version at The Oval in 1990 when Lancashire made 863 in response to Surrey’s 9-707, a shocking match.
With fewer alternatives and the game followed in vast numbers, Test cricket could survive a few of Bosser’s graveyards then, even if bowlers couldn’t. Now? Test cricket cannot afford that kind of tedium. The worst pitches for cricket are batting paradises, such as Melbourne in 2017, where Alastair Cook booked in for bed and breakfast, and Hamilton in 2019, where Joe Root did the same. Say what you like about Chennai, but it produced fascinating cricket.
The other extreme came at Sabina Park, Jamaica, in 1998 when, uniquely, a dangerous pitch caused the Test to be abandoned when I was captain of England. We had our concerns before the start, when the groundsman, Charlie Joseph, laid string from end to end, and it touched some parts of the pitch, with a two-inch gap elsewhere. The strip was like a corrugated roof, a shiny and hard one at that.
For 10 overs or so, we ducked, weaved and got hit. The physio was the busiest man in the ground. Barely an hour old, the cracks in the pitch had already started to open and pucker up, ready to disintegrate. Brian Lara called me on to the field and suggested I talk to the umpires before someone got hurt. It was his first game as West Indies captain and he had just replaced Courtney Walsh, the local hero, so he didn’t feel he could take the initiative. I did so, gladly, and the game was called off.
In between these extremes come the vast majority of pitches. An ideal strip would have a fair balance between bat and ball, one shaded to the bowlers, but perfection is rare in life, people and work. So some veer towards Bosser’s belter, and some towards Charlie’s crevice and crater-filled nightmare. Chennai was bowler-friendly, for sure, but it wasn’t dangerous, only challenging. After all, a No 8 scored a century in the second innings.
As the writer Kartikeya Date notes on his blog A Cricketing View, a pitch that spins is assessed far differently (especially in England) from one that seams. He notes that since 2014, England have been bowled out twice in Tests at home on 21 occasions; on 13 of those occasions in fewer overs than India managed in Chennai and on 17 occasions for fewer runs, yet there has been little comment. He wonders why a spinning pitch is routinely described as a “lottery” and a seaming pitch as “challenging”. His point is well made.
Variety from country to country and ground to ground is the key to Test cricket, and the only rationale for a game to be scheduled for five days is for the conditions to change in that time, offering a wealth of challenges. To enjoy lengthy careers, players know they must succeed in all kinds of conditions — hot, humid, cold and clammy — and on all kinds of pitches — fast, slow, skidding and gripping. Otherwise, the game may as well be played on artificial surfaces, with all the boredom that would entail.
Different conditions ask questions of captains and, occasionally, make fools of them. In St Vincent in 1994, we practised the day before a one-day international and, as captain, I looked at the pitch and determined to bat first. Later that day, I went for a walk and met a local on the beach who told me a fantastical story about the tide and the pitch. I can’t say now how much impact that had, if any, but I changed my mind in the morning and opted to bowl: West Indies made over 300.
In Brisbane in 2002, Nasser Hussain spent the morning of the match fretting about injuries and how to take 20 wickets with a Kookaburra ball on flat pitches. He had noticed the ball swinging in the warm-ups and, looking for something not there, decided to bowl first. Australia made 492; England lost by 384 runs. Half a century before, Len Hutton had felt like throwing himself in the Brisbane river having done the same thing. What will Ahmedabad have in store, I wonder?
THE TIMES
More Coverage
Australia turn to Lynagh – but this time it’s a gamble with young Tom
It’s a huge call to select Tom, son of former flyhalf Michael, at No.10 for Saturday's first Test against the Lions – and it doesn’t reflect well on Wallabies
Hubristic Christian Horner caused Red Bull to rot. No tears for the man who had it coming
The Red Bull team principal’s days were numbered once the poison created by his hubris started to affect the bottom line – results.
Players spend as much time looking at and discussing pitches as playing on them. In the days leading up to a Test match, it is the talk of the town: whaddya think? How will it play? Does it look a bit green, patchy, bare at the ends? Feels a bit cold, doesn’t it? Damp, maybe? Will it crumble? Heavy roller or light? We prod, stare, deconstruct. Then we ask the groundsman for advice and blame them when it goes wrong.