Vijay.Sharma
School Boy/Girl Captain
Since I am interested in knowing what really was the impact of wet wickets and how often people played on them, and who was & who wasn't successful on it, I am starting a new thread.
Since people swear about these wet wickets and sticky dogs and "back in the day all was more difficult and hence all was greater", how about sharing some of the information that those of you who feel so must've been privy to, with the rest?
I have the following questions especially -
a. What was the frequency of having to play on wet wickets / sticky wickets - u know like a percentage of innings in their career.
Given Headley played 15 innings in about 150 first class innings on wet/stickies between 1933-39, in his case it's about 10%. Don Bradman played 13 in the same period. I am guessing he would've played about 140-180 innings in that period.
b. At what point did they decide to call off a game if the wicket was too sticky or wet. I am sure there were abandoned games in the past, so what state of pitch was it that was considered to be not worth playing on.
c. Another aspect is this - in some of those old clips you can see they used covers even in those days. So I'd assume that if it started to rain during a game then obviously they would bring the covers on. Once the rain stops and the covers are removed, the state of the pitch is not exactly wet/sticky - it is just like how it is today when you remove the covers after the downpour (of course tech of covers has improved).
So how much is myth and is too much made of these wet wickets? I know these are fundamental questions and will not go well with many of you coz they force you to reconsider your beliefs but hey let's try to get a factual understanding of things rather than just mythological beliefs
Since people swear about these wet wickets and sticky dogs and "back in the day all was more difficult and hence all was greater", how about sharing some of the information that those of you who feel so must've been privy to, with the rest?
I have the following questions especially -
a. What was the frequency of having to play on wet wickets / sticky wickets - u know like a percentage of innings in their career.
Given Headley played 15 innings in about 150 first class innings on wet/stickies between 1933-39, in his case it's about 10%. Don Bradman played 13 in the same period. I am guessing he would've played about 140-180 innings in that period.
b. At what point did they decide to call off a game if the wicket was too sticky or wet. I am sure there were abandoned games in the past, so what state of pitch was it that was considered to be not worth playing on.
c. Another aspect is this - in some of those old clips you can see they used covers even in those days. So I'd assume that if it started to rain during a game then obviously they would bring the covers on. Once the rain stops and the covers are removed, the state of the pitch is not exactly wet/sticky - it is just like how it is today when you remove the covers after the downpour (of course tech of covers has improved).
So how much is myth and is too much made of these wet wickets? I know these are fundamental questions and will not go well with many of you coz they force you to reconsider your beliefs but hey let's try to get a factual understanding of things rather than just mythological beliefs