Stani Army

While batsmen were licking their lips, spectators, commentators and bowlers alike can’t have enjoyed the recent Test matches we’ve witnessed in the West Indies and Pakistan. Boring encounters on lifeless tracks have brought the issue of pitch preparation to the fore.It seems more and more difficult to witness a Test match on an ideal pitch these days where there is a fair contest between bat and ball. Not so long ago, the frequency of Tests finishing in 3 or 4 days was common. Because of the sports increasing commercialisation, a Test match lasting less than 5 days was seen as a missed opportunity to fill the coffers with advertisement, sponsorship and ticket money. The contest out in the middle took a back seat. We’re now seeing pitches that are created with a guarantee to last the full 5 days. For the batsmen, it’s a chance to cash in but for the bowlers, hours of graft with no results. The game of cricket has increasingly favoured the batsmen and this current pitch trend is just more of the same.

Should it continue it would become very difficult to make comparison between bowlers and batsmen of today and those of the past when pitches were not covered. Take the series between Pakistan and Sri Lanka as an example of the advantages for the batsmen and disadvantages for the bowlers. Murali, the world’s number one spinner has hardly had any success on the pitches in Pakistan. Younis Khan of Pakistan, on the other hand, managed to jump six places in the ICC’s Test rankings to the number one spot after making 313 in Karachi, and all this even though Pakistan had not played a Test in over a year.

Is it time the ICC formed more specific legislation on Test match pitches to keep the contest fair and attract viewers whilst starving off the threat of Twenty20 cricket? I’m afraid dead pitches will soon lead to the death of Test cricket.

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