All Out Cricket's Discussion Of The Week - Are county pitches good enough?

Today on www.alloutcricket.com AOC's new editor-at-large John Stern reviews a riveting round of Championship matches:

http://www.alloutcricket.com/blogs/comment/county-championship-bad-pitches-and-english-openers

With only a handful of batsman passing 50 last week, John discusses the tricky job of the ECB's pitch inspectors.

What's your take on the quality of pitches in domestic cricket and the system for assessing them?

I personally think there should be variety in the pitches all over the country. Some green tops,some turners and even some flat decks in the county game so that we arent found wanting overseas. Of course I am referring to the subcontinent.

Absolutely fine, in my view. Challenging pitches make for a much more exciting spectacle, and is a true test of a batsman's technique that should serve those that move on to Test level well.

Admittedly, it doesn't always help the bowlers in that they don't bowl in challenging conditions from a bowlers perspective, but that is why shanky is right in saying that variety is needed.

This latest round of games didn't see a bad pitch, in my view, but what it did see if plenty of loose batting. Take the Warwickshire v Somerset match which I attended as an example. Somerset were all out for 150-odd on day one, yet made 354 in their second dig. The pitch and the conditions did improve slightly, but it was far more a case of improved shot selection and concentration from the batsmen as to why they improved so much.

Likewise, Warwickshire were making serene progress in their second innings prior to a ridiculous middle order collapse within which all wickets that fell were as a result of poor batting.

I think it's great, typically difficult early season English conditions, and it makes for compelling viewing. County cricket needs spectator interest, and it is wickets that gain that, not flat decks where each side makes 600.

Ideally it would be nice to see a mixture, but the pitches certainly aren't bad.

Interesting topic.

Interesting question as Fists said.

I concur with him that the batting this season has probably been worse than the pitches - I attended the opening day of Middx-Surrey and, although Surrey, and Ramprakash in particular, were moaning about the surface, I felt it was at worst a normal April pitch. Certainly, when Sam Robson and Dawid Malan got in they weren't really troubled. It may have got more difficult as the game went on but that would be what you would expect from an English wicket in April.

As a wider point, I think variety is needed in pitch preparation. Yes, pitches around the world seem to be offering more in the last couple of years (probably a response to the widespread condemnation of the 'chief executive's pitch'), but something would be wrong if all county pitches were 200 all out pitches, as that would prevent batsmen from scoring the runs they need to successfully make the step up. In the West Indies poor pitches have been blamed for a poor standard of cricket, making the step up harder. Much of England's recent success has been that everybody that comes into the side has been ready - evidence for that is seen in 100s on debut for Strauss, Cook, Trott and Prior, fifties on debut for KP and Bell, and strong starts for most of the bowlers as well.

From a bowlers point of view the pitches need to be of a sufficient standard that the best bowlers are the most effective. That clearly wasn't the case last year in Div 2 where journeymen like Masters, Will Gidman and Linley dominated preceedings.

A bug-bear of mine, however, is teams being docked points for 'poor' pitches. There seems to be a culture of lets "call up the pitch inspectors" if a cluster of wickets fall down, rather than a concern for the ability of the batsmen in tough conditions. An example of this was last year's Hants-Notts match at the Rose Bowl. The pitch turned quite a bit (almost every other Rose Bowl pitch was flat), and Hants were docked point for it. But players need to learn how to play in turning conditions. Hants were put off from tailoring pitches for Tahir after that, and visiting (and home) batsmen missed out on the chance to play in conditions unfamiliar to English players.

Why the batting is so bad all of a sudden is anybody's guess. Maybe a discussion for another time.

I don't think you can expect great batting pitches in England in April really. These haven't seemed particularly bad. Sure there's some movement (and quite a lot of it by all accounts in the Surrey-Middlesex match), but it's not as if batsmen have been incapable of scoring runs. Malan applied himself and made loads, Hamilton-Brown scored a run-a-ball fifty which should have taken Surrey over the line, etc.

I'd much rather watch low-scoring but exciting games than 600/4 vs 850/7 (Middlesex vs Somerset of a few years back?).

Its early April, it's cloudy, there's little sun so of course there's going to be lots of swing and low scores. I have no problem with it - look at India's first class game where a common score is something like:

Team 1 - 550/4 dec.
Team 2 - 700/5 dec.
Team 1 - 300/4 dec.
Team 2 - 24/0 and game over.

Some really interesting comments here, guys. What do you all think about points deductions - is the current system consistent?

All Out Cricket wrote:Some really interesting comments here, guys. What do you all think about points deductions - is the current system consistent?

Well,docking points for a turning pitch was frankly a disgrace. Apart from that its ok.

I agree with Andrew(Fists) that challenging pitches make for exciting cricket but IMO challenge should work both ways. Bowlers should be challenged too,not just the batsmen. Having said that,the pitches so far have been fine IMO. The batting has been shocking. I dont think you can expect better pitches in April. I hope there will be more variety in the pitches as the the season goes on so that there is assistance for the seamers as well as the spinners but there should be some runs in too. The bowlers cant have it too easy either or else this new crop of bowlers might find life in Asia a bit difficult if they just keep bowling on green tops. The pitches so far though have been fine IMO for April. The young batsmen in England need to pull their socks up. The No.6 spot is there for the taking.

Pitches, just like conditions are so varied throughout England that there's probably as many different possible situations on field as the rest of the cricketing world put together and IMO, that's what makes the English county game the best place for testing all the credentials needed to become a top player, or for that matter, an umpire.
As for docking points for 'poor' pitches, the day a county is docked points for a 4 day game where the scorecards end 645/5 and 684/7 is the day I'll agree with the system, but as a 'poor' pitches seem to only occur when wickets tumble, I'll continue to think it's a bad idea.

Your last sentence is absolutely bang on the money, RR.

Leaving aside for a moment whether county pitches were good enough at the start of this month, it should be recognised by those who set the fixtures - and this is a serious point! - that it was bitterly cold then. Probably not great to be standing at slip with frozen hands. Also, far less pleasant than it should have been for spectators sitting and watching the first day of the County Championship season.

I appreciate British weather is unpredictable but as a sensible general rule- the closer you are to the start of the calendar year, the colder it's going to be. I'm inclined to think that Ramps spends too much time these days whinging on twitter and not enough accumulating runs at the crease. However, I understood where he was coming from when he tweeted - ''Let's make it a 32 match county season and start on 5th January!''.

guildfordbat wrote:Leaving aside for a moment whether county pitches were good enough at the start of this month, it should be recognised by those who set the fixtures - and this is a serious point! - that it was bitterly cold then. Probably not great to be standing at slip with frozen hands. Also, far less pleasant than it should have been for spectators sitting and watching the first day of the County Championship season.

I appreciate British weather is unpredictable but as a sensible general rule- the closer you are to the start of the calendar year, the colder it's going to be. I'm inclined to think that Ramps spends too much time these days whinging on twitter and not enough accumulating runs at the crease. However, I understood where he was coming from when he tweeted - ''Let's make it a 32 match county season and start on 5th January!''.

But the cricket season is too short if you start in May and finish in September. For me, professional cricketers are paid to play cricket and playing in tough and sometimes cold conditions is part of that. Of course, part of the reason we finish in mid-September rather than late September/early October is so that two teams can play in the Champions League. If we finished in the first week of October we wouldn't have to start until late April.

Shelsey93 wrote:
.... For me, professional cricketers are paid to play criicket ....

Shelsey - you miss my main point which is that spectators are paying to watch cricket and more consideration should be given to them.

so take a rug with you

I get where you're coming from, but the fixture list is congested enough as it is, surely, so the only two possible solutions to the problem are reducing the amount of county cricket played - something IIRC you're not a fan of - or pushing the season back - which won't happen because of the financial benefits of playing in the CL - so I don't really see how you work around that.

To be fair, I'm perfectly happy to go and watch a rugby game in mid-winter in the evening. Yes it's shorter than cricket but conditions are significantly colder...

The problem isn't so much congestion due to the amount of cricket played over an English season but that the fixture list has been designed by a bunch of lunatics.

Almost half of CC matches in April and May - a lot of potential spectators do not have the money, the time or the inclination to attend many of these fixtures in such a restricted period of likely poor weather. Meanwhile, from late May to mid August Surrey CC followers have to make do with one home CC game which isn't even at the Oval.

Guilford,

I would suggest all the slip fielders have hand-warmers in their pockets (it used to be tea bags!) to help keep their hands warm.

I also suggest that the scheduling of mainly T20 matches during the summer months is entirely deliberate: it is the only reasonable time to play day-night cricket (as you rightly point out, it is cold enough during the day at the moment), and of course it makes perfect financial sense to have your main attraction (let's be honest, T20 matches draw far bigger crowds) when more people are free and willing to go. I'm not suggesting this is right, but clearly this is the reasoning, and as sport seems to be constantly taking a back seat to commercialness nowadays we shouldn't be surprised (now I'm sounding like an MCC "it used to be better when I was young" member...).

On the subject of pitches I side comfortably with the majority: tough pitches are far preferable to flat pitches, because they provide a much better assessment of a batsman's suitability at test level. Again a player like Dawid Malan has shown clearly he has the temparament and ability to deal with it. I think the point on ordinary bowlers getting wickets is fair, but not as important:
- things as they currently are England have an excellent batch of seamers to choose from, and several clearly international standard ones coming through, so at least for the next 8 years the needs to produce fantastic seamers is anyway far less than the need to produce good batsmen.
- No one who matters will ever see someone like David Masters as potential international quality (no offence meant, I admire David Masters hugely for what he is).
- there is a great tradition of average seamers who aren't really international standard taking hatfulls of wickets in the county game: see Martin Bicknell (sorry), Mark Davies, etc. I don't think it is in anyway a new phenomenom.
- Regarding the 2nd division, the different ball they were using certainly seemed to me to be doing a lot more.

On turning pitches, I agree again with those condemning the condemnation of a pitch which turns early on. I remember a one-day match between Essex and Glamorgan a couple of years ago where the pitch was deemed unfit: Kaneria took a bagfull, and Cosker and Dalrymple span it quite a bit, but the pitch took far less turn than the one we are seeing in the West Indies-Australia game. If we want our batsmen to learn how to play spin (and to grow up learning how to play spin) which let's face it is probably a good idea, we should be encouraging these kind of surfaces, not criminalising them.

Mike Selig wrote:Guilford,

I would suggest all the slip fielders have hand-warmers in their pockets (it used to be tea bags!) to help keep their hands warm.

I also suggest that the scheduling of mainly T20 matches during the summer months is entirely deliberate: it is the only reasonable time to play day-night cricket (as you rightly point out, it is cold enough during the day at the moment), and of course it makes perfect financial sense to have your main attraction (let's be honest, T20 matches draw far bigger crowds) when more people are free and willing to go. I'm not suggesting this is right, but clearly this is the reasoning, and as sport seems to be constantly taking a back seat to commercialness nowadays we shouldn't be surprised (now I'm sounding like an MCC "it used to be better when I was young" member...).

On the subject of pitches I side comfortably with the majority: tough pitches are far preferable to flat pitches, because they provide a much better assessment of a batsman's suitability at test level. Again a player like Dawid Malan has shown clearly he has the temparament and ability to deal with it. I think the point on ordinary bowlers getting wickets is fair, but not as important:
- things as they currently are England have an excellent batch of seamers to choose from, and several clearly international standard ones coming through, so at least for the next 8 years the needs to produce fantastic seamers is anyway far less than the need to produce good batsmen.
- No one who matters will ever see someone like David Masters as potential international quality (no offence meant, I admire David Masters hugely for what he is).
- there is a great tradition of average seamers who aren't really international standard taking hatfulls of wickets in the county game: see Martin Bicknell (sorry), Mark Davies, etc. I don't think it is in anyway a new phenomenom.
- Regarding the 2nd division, the different ball they were using certainly seemed to me to be doing a lot more.

On turning pitches, I agree again with those condemning the condemnation of a pitch which turns early on. I remember a one-day match between Essex and Glamorgan a couple of years ago where the pitch was deemed unfit: Kaneria took a bagfull, and Cosker and Dalrymple span it quite a bit, but the pitch took far less turn than the one we are seeing in the West Indies-Australia game. If we want our batsmen to learn how to play spin (and to grow up learning how to play spin) which let's face it is probably a good idea, we should be encouraging these kind of surfaces, not criminalising them.

Mike - good post.

Actually agree with much of it. I certainly welcome tough pitches. I've always maintained that you don't need a lot of runs for an exciting match - Middlesex v Surrey in the CC last week for example. Much credit to Malan for a tremendous innings in all the circumstances. One of the greatest innings ever in CC cricket was when Barry Richards in 1974 carried his bat for 225 against Notts; the innings and the pitch put into context by Richards' Hants being rolled over for just 344.

I also agree with your assessment of Martin Bicknell's Test credentials. Probably best not to say too much there as he's apparently threatening to duff up a poster from the Surrey supporters website who labelled the current team ''idiots''!

I still maintain much of the current scheduling borders on and at times oversteps lunacy. 'Sir' Alec Stewart has been making a similar point recently and drawing attention to Surrey having three t20 home games in the space of four days in the first week of July. That is utterly ridiculous and totally counter to any 'commercial' arguments. Very few have the time, availability, money (for many - like me - travelling into London is bl**dy expensive!) and inclination for so much of this type of cricket in such a short period.

Everyone should remember that this seasons schedule will never be repeated, the Olympics, with their laws in place regarding other sporting events taking place as the same time, has seen to that.
I wholeheartedly support the Olympics, but becasue we have them for a few weeks, other sports are simply not allowed to have any events that conflict with them, that's the reason why this season is as messed up as it is, as for fututre seasons, we'll go back to the standard model, silly scheduling, but not quite as farcical as this year.

it really annoys me when people blame the pitches for early season batting....

yes the pitch is a factor however there is other factors...

1.ECB- ridiclously making the season start back end of march, early april, when its p*****g down with rain all the time!
2.Yes the pitches are going to be green and swining and seaming, because there would have been a lack of sunlight on them, thus unable to dry the surfaces out.
3.Batsmen should enjoy the challenge! You have to learn to bat on all surfaces, and if it means toughing it out on these pitches, then fine!