What makes a good test pitch?

[Furball]

PEWS with an excellent point about "good" v "acceptable".

 

[Black_Warrior]

I think this really gets to the crux of it. I don't think curators are ethically required to prepare good pitches.

What makes a 'good pitch' comes down to subjective tastes and preferences more than anything else, but it's what makes an acceptable pitch that I think is really at hand here. To me, a pitch ceases to be acceptable if i provides too much of an advantage to the team winning the toss, if it's very unlikely to produce a result, if it's exceedingly dangerous to play on, or if it turns the game into too much of a lottery.

Ok the term lottery has been the subject of intense debate
But can you elaborate on that and if possible, give an example of a scenario or a test match?

This thread was obviously inspired at least in part by the pitch in Nagpur. Whether that was a 'good pitch' in anyone's estimation is a subjective judgement that will be derived from what sort of cricket they'd like to see personally, but by the relatively objective criteria I set out above for a pitch being acceptable, it absolutely was IMO. India played much better cricket and they won for that reason.

Yes but I have been meaning to start a thread about pitches for a while because it is one of the most talked about topics in any test series thread and rightly so. It is important and on Day 1 people just generally want to see how the pitch behaves. I am just interested in a conversation solely on pitches and what people want rather than sporadic discussions that only take place during a hotly debated match and then people forget about it.

One important thing that I gathered is that what we understand traditionally as a good pitch is
1) not always possible because of different physical and weather conditions
2) not always in favour of the home team's interests.

I don't think Pakistan or India or even Australia would like to produce a seaming Day 1 pitch for England which would enhance the Broad-Anderson thread.

 

[silentstriker]

One that gets a result, is not dangerous and does not turn the game into a 50-50 proposition.

 

[Furball]

PEWS with an excellent point about "good" v "acceptable".

So yeah, I'll clarify that Perth for me was just about acceptable because the batsmen at least had something to work with, although the prospect of a result largely existed as the result of declarations. I'm still calling Nagpur 2015 good.

 

[OverratedSanity]

And I've said my piece elsewhere, but I think a lot of people have just been guilty of looking at India's team selection, looking at the scorecard and clocking South Africa being bowled out for 79 and judged the pitch without watching the game. The dice were loaded in favour of the bowlers, but the batsmen still had the chance to roll double 6s.It's also worth remembering for the "how does this help India" brigade that the last time India tried a stunt like that in terms of pitch preparation (which there's nothing wrong with btw), it backfired on them because England had the better spinners and turned the series round. A win most certainly wasn't out of the question for South Africa (remember they don't have Steyn), particularly if they'd batted better. India would have been bricking it after throwing away a huge bunch of wickets on day 1 and only posting 215. That wasn't in their game plan.

****ing thank you. Been shouting this for the last two days.

 

[Prince EWS]

Ok the term lottery has been the subject of intense debate
But can you elaborate on that and if possible, give an example of a scenario or a test match?

Luck is always a very big factor in cricket. Sometimes good spells go unrewarded, sometimes bad balls take wickets, sometimes your best batsman gets a jaffa early and doesn't have an opportunity to impart his quality onto the game, sometimes umpires make errors, etc etc. One the reasons Test matches are played over two innings and go for five days is that the nature of the game isn't always prone to accurately demonstrating the difference in quality between two teams over shorter periods.

I think a pitch falls into the 'unacceptable' category when it makes the luck factor way too big by narrowing the gap between good and mediocre cricket. I think a good example might be this game where there effectively became no difference between the standard of Michael Clarke's bowling and Harbhajan's. I think this sort of lottery is usually created by very unpredictable and uneven bounce more than anything else, but this is just an observation rather than a hard and fast rule.

I'd like to clarify at this point that pitches that just nullify or reward a certain style of bowling are still 'acceptable' by my way of thinking, as long as they still reward the better exponents of that style more than the average exponents of at least one style. To use the Nagpur pitch just gone as an example again, the pitch heavily favoured spin but because the bounce was reasonably consistent, the best spinner playing was still the most effective relative to the others. To become a 'lottery' it has to make luck a bigger factor than skill rather than just favour a particular bowling style.

Yes but I have been meaning to start a thread about pitches for a while because it is one of the most talked about topics in any test series thread and rightly so. It is important and on Day 1 people just generally want to see how the pitch behaves. I am just interested in a conversation solely on pitches and what people want rather than sporadic discussions that only take place during a hotly debated match and then people forget about it.

Yeah I wasn't attacking you for starting the thread at all. I was just using the Nagpur pitch as an example to explain my point better. I can understand people not liking that sort of cricket and therefore not thinking it was a good pitch by their own subjective criteria, but there's a difference between that and it being an unacceptable pitch that the groundsman should be chastised for.

 

[Black_Warrior]

The thing is though, if every pitch in the world was this mythical "perfect pitch" then cricket would be pretty boring. Part of the charm of the game is that where you're playing the game dictates how you play the game. You expect the ball to nip about and seam or swing a bit in England. Hence why England specialises in producing guys like James Anderson who operate best in the 82-83 mph range, because that suits his home conditions best (although he can crank it up.) Australia has harder, faster, bouncier pitches, hence Australia having a pace battery of 90 mph guys. Go to the subcontinent and the pitches are more abrasive (hence the emergence of the Pakistani reverse swingers) and spinners become more of a factor.

What works in England doesn't work in Australia which doesn't work in India. Great players will adapt and thrive in all conditions, merely good players will only succeed in 2 out of 3 or 1 out of the 3 (inadvertent big 3 comparison here, cbf doing all 10 and those 3 are different enough.) Then of course, within each country you'll have variety (Gabba and WACA traditionally faster, Sydney traditionally suiting spin).

All of the above contributes to the rich tapestry of Test cricket. Think why Tendulkar's century in Perth at the age of 18 is so celebrated - it's because those conditions are about as alien as it's possible to get for a young boy from Bombay, yet he mastered them when his older, more experienced team mates could not. Bradman was supposed to fail the first time he set foot in England, yet he wound up with the record for most runs in both a Test match and series (the latter of which remains unbroken 85 years later). The variety of conditions around the world is something to be celebrated and cherished because it makes cricket unique.

Now onto the pitch that's caused such a furore. The reason I'm taking exception to a lot of what has been said is because people are mislabelling the pitch. For me, a pitch is good if it offers something to at least someone. Nagpur had plenty in it for the bowlers - yes, the new ball was less of a factor than it is elsewhere for the seamers, but a seamer with clever cutters or someone who can use reverse swing was definitely in business here as well - which as far as I'm concerned makes it a good pitch. I'd also call the Perth pitch a good pitch, somewhat controversially, because the Perth pitch at least had plenty for the batsmen - the old WACA cliche of getting full value for your shots certainly applied when you consider the speed at which Warner, Smith, Taylor and Williamson scored their runs.

Where both Nagpur and Perth have drawn ire is because you might not like the particular brand of cricket on display as the result of the pitch. Which I'm sympathetic to, I thought the Perth test was a bore fest because I hate watching bowlers toil away all day with the prospect of no reward while batsmen can just gorge on easy runs. Perth's only saving grace was the speed of run scoring meant that a positive result either way was still a possibility. Personally, a Test like Nagpur where the bowlers are always in the game is better to watch. And I've said my piece elsewhere, but I think a lot of people have just been guilty of looking at India's team selection, looking at the scorecard and clocking South Africa being bowled out for 79 and judged the pitch without watching the game. The dice were loaded in favour of the bowlers, but the batsmen still had the chance to roll double 6s. It's also worth remembering for the "how does this help India" brigade that the last time India tried a stunt like that in terms of pitch preparation (which there's nothing wrong with btw), it backfired on them because England had the better spinners and turned the series round. A win most certainly wasn't out of the question for South Africa (remember they don't have Steyn), particularly if they'd batted better. India would have been bricking it after throwing away a huge bunch of wickets on day 1 and only posting 215. That wasn't in their game plan.

The only pitches I'd call poor are pitches which are outright dangerous (which pretty much don't exist anymore) or a surface like Nagpur 2012 which offers absolutely nothing to anyone. The bowlers had to toil away for days to get anything on that one, but unlike Perth this year, the pitch was so slow and turgid that the batsmen got nothing to work with either. That just makes for junk cricket. It is those pitches that need to be weeded from the game, not a pitch like Nagpur which challenged and exposed batsmen from both sides.

Disjointed and a bit rambly, but I'm running late for work. Might clarify later.

Great points. I think we need a range of 'ideal' pitches to take into consideration the vast difference in physical factors between SC and say England or New Zealand. A 'good' pitch for example will last for most part of 4-5 days in England or Australia and produce cricket of this kind.
UAE also produces pitches that last 4-5 days but people find it too slow.


A game ending in 3 days like Trent Bridge or Nagpur here isn't generally bad for me personally as I enjoy watching heaps of wickets but I guess for a lot of people that looks bad, and even commercially it could be detrimental.

 

[Howe_zat]

I'm with *****.


That being said, give me a pitch that's a greentop down one end and a dustbowl up the other. A true test of batsmen.

I wonder what that would do to the running between the wickets.

 

[RossTaylorsBox]

I'm with *****.


That being said, give me a pitch that's a greentop down one end and a dustbowl up the other. A true test of batsmen.

Do this but make it two halves lengthwise.

 

[Coronis]

Luck is always a very big factor in cricket. Sometimes good spells go unrewarded, sometimes bad balls take wickets, sometimes your best batsman gets a jaffa early and doesn't have an opportunity to impart his quality onto the game, sometimes umpires make errors, etc etc. One the reasons Test matches are played over two innings and go for five days is that the nature of the game isn't always prone to accurately demonstrating the difference in quality between two teams over shorter periods.

I think a pitch falls into the 'unacceptable' category when it makes the luck factor way too big by narrowing the gap between good and mediocre cricket. I think a good example might be this game where there effectively became no difference between the standard of Michael Clarke's bowling and Harbhajan's. I think this sort of lottery is usually created by very unpredictable and uneven bounce more than anything else, but this is just an observation rather than a hard and fast rule.

I'd like to clarify at this point that pitches that just nullify or reward a certain style of bowling are still 'acceptable' by my way of thinking, as long as they still reward the better exponents of that style more than the average exponents of at least one style. To use the Nagpur pitch just gone as an example again, the pitch heavily favoured spin but because the bounce was reasonably consistent, the best spinner playing was still the most effective relative to the others. To become a 'lottery' it has to make luck a bigger factor than skill rather than just favour a particular bowling style.



Yeah I wasn't attacking you for starting the thread at all. I was just using the Nagpur pitch as an example to explain my point better. I can understand people not liking that sort of cricket and therefore not thinking it was a good pitch by their own subjective criteria, but there's a difference between that and it being an unacceptable pitch that the groundsman should be chastised for.

I just think Michael Clarke is an exceptional bowler. He's no Darren Lehmann though.

 

[Contra]

Pitches that turn from the start can get easier to bat on if they slow down. Ahmedabad 2012 is an example.

Except that pitch didn't turn from the start..

 

[G.I.Joe]

Do this but make it two halves lengthwise.

Make it 4 strategically tailored quadrants, IMO. Neutralize all the spinners except Ashwin.

 

[Contra]

I also feel people need to get out of this "test finished only in X amount of days" thing, times and changing and players and teams play in much more of an aggressive manner regardless of the pitch, so even on good pitches you don't see tests lasting all 5 days with the same frequency that you did in the past. Everything in accelerated in general, not just because of the pitches.

 

[Gob]

Seamy road

 

[Daemon]

how do you know what a seamy road is mr join date oct 2014

 

[Black_Warrior]

how do you know what a seamy road is mr join date oct 2014

And how do you know he is not a multi that has been here for eons?

 

[Black_Warrior]

We are going to see a fair few 3 days test matches when West Indies play Australia this year.

#badfortestcricket

 

[Furball]

****ing thank you. Been shouting this for the last two days.

There's also this weird anti-spin bias going on as well, nobody bitched about Headingley being unfit for Test cricket in 2009 when Australia rocked up, saw a green wicket and picked 4 seamers, bowled England out for 100 on the first morning and won inside 3 days. Yet India going with a 3 spinner to 1 seamer balance is somehow evidence that the pitch was a shocker.

 

[Dan]

Nagpur had plenty in it for the bowlers - yes, the new ball was less of a factor than it is elsewhere for the seamers, but a seamer with clever cutters or someone who can use reverse swing was definitely in business here as well - which as far as I'm concerned makes it a good pitch.

Man, could you imagine MJ bowling his cutters on that deck? He was turning 'em in the Windies at 135km/h; they'd have been going square on that deck.

 

[Furball]

Man, could you imagine MJ bowling his cutters on that deck? He was turning 'em in the Windies at 135km/h; they'd have been going square on that deck.

Precisely.

England would also have flattened India on that deck if we'd been served it up in 2012 with the way Swann and Panesar were going in that series. Anderson would've been randomly available to just wreck India's lineup with reverse tang as well.