Pitch Fever

gchakravarthy — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:13:00 GMT

The barrage of verbal bullets in response to the metallic type continues across the world.

The black-arm-banded cricketers are trying to move on in the Southern Hemisphere. The ever more colorful and flighted peacocks take on the currently black-capped and flightless kiwis in the ODIs. But as cricketers and fans know only too well, it is not flight alone that wins cricket matches ... something the New Zealand captain seems to know as well in this format. How else would one explain his rarely flighted deliveries, especially in the limited overs versions. Meanwhile, near the Cape of Good Hope, Australians are hoping for good things and acting accordingly.

But in all of this, the din from a few otherwise loud happenings from the immediately preceding previous weeks has been drowned.

Two weeks between Feb 21 and March 04,
four teams,
three (or four if you count ARGHHHH!) pitches,
total match scores of: 1553, 1628, and 716 (in just 2 days in the now infamous Test),
total match wickets of: 18, 17, 11 ('that' test again),
number of double centuries: 4,
number of triple centuries: 1,
total declarations: 4

Tom Pilcher, on Reuter's blog-post, digs up a few more statistical gems , notably:

"A list of highest test innings above 600 includes five totals all scored in the last couple of weeks, and two of those make the top 10."

There is an easy (land)scape-goat: "The pitch must have been as flat as a dead man's EKG." But there might be more to this that meets the eye. Could it be, and this might well be an outrageous suggestion, but could it be that this has something to do with the actual players and their skills!! There, it has been said! As our very own Suresh Menon observers in his latest column on DreamCricket.com, batting skills and peripherals seem to have come a long way in the last decade or so:

"Better equipment, greater fitness, and the trained ability to place the ball between orthodox fielding positions has made the modern batsman fully confident of scoring at a galloping pace."

It will not be a big surprise either that bowler's averages have inflated by 10% in just the past 5 years compared to what they were in the previous two decades. But is that an indication of bowler's skills dropping? Or is it more of an indication of the batsmen becoming more adept in their craft? Or is it both? While this quandary conjures up the following image,

John, in commenting about Tom's blog referred to above, thinks that the poultry farmer and the egg-distributor are in bed:

"Under Steve Waugh, Australia stepped up the tempo of test cricket to such an extent that matches began finishing regularly in four days. This, of course, didn’t please the television companies and by coincidence or not pitches have become increasingly more bland. For example there hasn’t been a result at Lord’s since 2005."

He is most certainly not alone in this view-point as Dean Wilson joins him on The Mirror:

The wickets are being produced so that Test matches last five days, and the money that is generated from as many days of Test cricket as possible keeps flooding in. Never mind that the actual product is a bore.

Vic Marks questions the science, or the very existence thereof, in the making of cricket pitches:

In an age when everything can be scientifically annotated and analysed it is amazing how neglected the art of pitch-making remains.

But does it not finally all come down to pure skill? Most in the blogosphere (and elsewhere) would readily agree that cricket is foremost a battle between bat and ball. If that is truly so, what does it matter if that ball is bounced on moon or that bat can launch things into orbit?

Who drives the balance between bat and ball ... their wielders or their "fielders"? Is the pitch really that big of a deal or is it the pitcher?

Cover Points : balance

Pitch Fever