2nd Test (Edgbaston) - July 2nd

[Son Of Coco]

I dunno if you read the full article as I see its behind a paywall now. I think it very clearly stated the instructions were to prepare pitches that will make it difficult for Indian batsmen specifically. I dont see a problem with that coz that is what every team does and have always done in the WTC era. Those points become crucial. As long as conditions are not dangerous and/or unfair to one team, I see no issues with it. You seem hung up on some hypothetical moral high ground. I can tell you probably wont be able to find a single link where an Indian curator said he was preparing a turner under instructions either..

You'll very rarely find the curators admitting it anywhere. Occasionally you'll get a captain calling for a certain type of wicket before a series begins (looking at you Ben Stokes) and lo and behold what do you know!? Generally though, not even the captains are stupid enough to telegraph that certain discussions might have been had.

You don't need to hear it from anyone though. If pitches change due to the series ledger and what helps the home team ensure victory or they are markedly different to what has been seen previously at the same place without extenuating factors like extended rain periods/drought etc, then something funny is probably going on.

You could set your watch to what each Australian pitch would offer up until around the early 2000s. We then got those shitty drop in pitches at a number of venues + drier weather for a long period of time (the drought was around 4 years in some states), which ****ed things and gave us those horrific flat decks for an extended period of time.

They got a bit more bounce in them through the middish 20-teens, and then for the last 4-5 years we've seen greener decks with more wet weather in many places + the curators leaving more grass on most pitches, especially the drop in and the pink ball test venues. It's been pretty predictable the whole way through.

It makes it kind of laughable though when we are called 'cheats' by certain sections of the cricketing fraternity. I mean, please.

At some point you are going to have to admit we are actually the archangels of the cricketing world. We **** gold nuggets and fart fairness and magical spirit of cricket dust.

 

[Starfighter]

Every year a journalist hacks out an article about the Perth pitch and it's 'pace and bounce' (perhaps aided by the curators indicating this is what they were aiming for to bring back that tradition), and it has rarely been the case for a long, long time, although it is constantly the goal. Perth has suffered from droughts and below average rainfall to the extent that some lakes had dried up completely - I am not sure if this has changed over the past few years, but it was the case when I went there on a water management course a number of years ago. With drop ins at Optus now there's no chance they will replicate the WACA at any stage. Last year had a little bit of go in it, but we'll never see a true Perth pitch produced again. It's not possible, which is a pity because I loved the old fiery WACA wickets, even when the West Indies handed us our arses on it. It was a fantastic spectacle.

I'm somewhat doubtful that Perth's long-term drying was really responsible. The tests were during summer when it doesn't rain anyway, plus it could be watered as necessary. When it was at its fastest it apparently used to be so hard that spikes wouldn't bite into the surface properly (I could swear I once read of a well known bowler slipping over, but don't remember the name).

I've heard what changed was the soil. The original soil wasn't available anymore when the ground was redeveloped in the eighties. A substitute was what produced the fast but very cracked pitches in the 90s. Reducing that made it slower, which suited CA's demand at the time for flat pitches. There was a news story some years ago where the groundsman up until 2015 claimed he was sacked because he'd tried to make the pitch faster (saying he'd found a soil type that promised to be similar to the original). The test afterwards was on a pitch so comatose Johnson decided to quit on the spot.

I suspect pitch preparation also has a role - apparently there was a groundsman change before the eighties redevelopment - and that people haven't been able to replicate the combination of rolling and watering that worked before. There's a parallel with the Kingston and Bridgetown pitches, where the routine that created completely bare, very hard, reflective pitches seems to have been lost and they've often become dustbowls in WI domestic matches.

I thought the Optus pitch was promising after the 2018 test against India, which was by a distance the quickest I've seen in Australia since I started watching seriously in 2010. But none of the subsequent ones have lived up to it. Pitch preparation in this country seems to have changed overall, with groundsmen relying more on leaving live grass rather than creating a hard surface to get pace.

 

[honestbharani]

At some point you are going to have to admit we are actually the archangels of the cricketing world. We **** gold nuggets and fart fairness and magical spirit of cricket dust.

Yep, you definitely are that kind of cheats.

But look, for me, there was no Indian wicket that played against nature except the ones that actually helped your lot win here in 2004 at Nagpur and then one in 2009 or whenever where Dale Steyn went to town on another seaming wicket. Both of those were produced for some reason coz the particular state association did not like the BCCI president and it meant taking it out on the Indian team and their captain ensuring they lose. I dont think any pitch in India behaved against their nature at all outside of that. I think what happens is sometimes curators are not sure just how dry they want to leave the pitch and even then, on lottery turners we have usually ended up losing. So I really doubt its by choice always.

Now, if you wanna discuss bringing up the friggin boundary on a normal sized ground to a barely Eden Park standard 65m coz your team likes hitting boundaries and sixes... that is a different story.

 

[Spark]

Yep, you definitely are that kind of cheats.

But look, for me, there was no Indian wicket that played against nature except the ones that actually helped your lot win here in 2004 at Nagpur and then one in 2009 or whenever where Dale Steyn went to town on another seaming wicket. Both of those were produced for some reason coz the particular state association did not like the BCCI president and it meant taking it out on the Indian team and their captain ensuring they lose. I dont think any pitch in India behaved against their nature at all outside of that. I think what happens is sometimes curators are not sure just how dry they want to leave the pitch and even then, on lottery turners we have usually ended up losing. So I really doubt its by choice always.

Now, if you wanna discuss bringing up the friggin boundary on a normal sized ground to a barely Eden Park standard 65m coz your team likes hitting boundaries and sixes... that is a different story.

The Bengaluru deck against NZ last year doesn't count? That flat out seemed to be a bizarro mirror dimension version of a Centurion deck which somehow got transported to India.

 

[honestbharani]

The Bengaluru deck against NZ last year doesn't count? That flat out seemed to be a bizarro mirror dimension version of a Centurion deck which somehow got transported to India.

I think it was because of some of the rain that was around. They were trying to get a hard and true track and went too far. I dont think they had any issues with the board etc. I mean, its a Karnataka guy running the BCCI in Roger Binny.