How about standardizing the cricket pitch?

[surajmal]

This is one major difference between cricket and any other team sport - variability in the playing conditions. If ICC/admins are serious about saving test cricket and the test championship, they really need to consider this. Home track bully syndrome is only going getting worse and is a primary contributor to declining interest in test cricket. 

How about deciding on a pitch that offers everything - seam/bounce early on and spin later (Dharamsala pitch from early last year is a good model to build on). 

 

Discuss. 

[maniac]

I agree about standardizing pitches

 

 

 

[Forever Indian]

Standardising is not the answer, as the sameness will further reduce the interest factor. In order to reduce the home advantage, tosses can be scrapped and the visiting team asked to decide to bat or bowl. This will automatically reduce home teams tampering the pitch too much to gain advantage as well.

[maniac]

On a serious note...cricket is obviously not soccer or field hockey or basketball.

 

Look at tennis for example which obviously is an individual sport but still it is exciting watching players compete on different surfaces. 

 

Cricket has the  best of both worlds...that’s the beauty of it.

 

playing in a condition totally unfamiliar to you against a team that is master at it makes it that much more fun to watch...it already has an inbuilt Underdog story to it.

 

Maybe standardizing a pitch per that country and its conditions might be a good idea but not an overall uniform pitch...that would make it boring.

[surajmal]

If a batsman has never trained on pitches that offer more than waist high bounce and is suddenly asked to tour Australia - I don't call that fun. Rather torture for both the batsman and viewers. 

[Tattieboy]

I am wondering how you will standardise  sun, cloud,  rain, wind, all which haven't effect on games.

Why can batsmen not play in other conditions?  I believe now,  attack is the new defence , score rate must be 4 runs an over at least and everyone are playing attacking shots that would not have been attempted  by batsmen such as Tendulkar and Dravid etc etc 

[surajmal]

6 minutes ago, Tattieboy said:

I am wondering how you will standardise  sun, cloud,  rain, wind, all which haven't effect on games.

Why can batsmen not play in other conditions?  I believe now,  attack is the new defence , score rate must be 4 runs an over at least and everyone are playing attacking shots that would not have been attempted  by batsmen such as Tendulkar and Dravid etc etc 

Weather you can't control. But the pitch - I like the idea of drop ins. ICC needs to commission a study or two to figure this sh it out. 

[maniac]

20 minutes ago, surajmal said:

If a batsman has never trained on pitches that offer more than waist high bounce and is suddenly asked to tour Australia - I don't call that fun. Rather torture for both the batsman and viewers. 

Technique or basics is more or less still the same for every batsman across the world....the training comes with practice...foreign players have played outstanding innings on dustbowls/spinning tracks and so have Subcontinent batsmen on bouncy/green tracks

 

If a batsman is not able to adapt to a pitch where he is not used to playing then he is just not good enough.

 

As far as training goes that comes with practice....if you don’t practice or train enough then you will get walloped regardless of the

pitch...case in point the current series.

 

Our bowlers didn’t do well initially at the start but they quickly “adapted”  to the lengths and competed strength to strength...our spinner has done better than their spinner, ...so if batsmen couldn’t adapt whose fault is that?

Edited January 20, 2018 by maniac

[Tattieboy]

2 minutes ago, surajmal said:

Weather you can't control. But the pitch - I like the idea of drop ins. ICC needs to commission a study or two to figure this sh it out. 

You and I might like the idea,  what you think BCCI would think of it 

 

3 minutes ago, surajmal said:

Weather you can't control. But the pitch - I like the idea of drop ins. ICC needs to commission a study or two to figure this sh it out. 

You and I might like  that idea,  but what you think BCCI would think???

[surajmal]

48 minutes ago, Tattieboy said:

You and I might like the idea,  what you think BCCI would think of it 

 

You and I might like  that idea,  but what you think BCCI would think???

as long as they can make some money.

[Muloghonto]

bad idea, since one of the most entertaining aspect of cricket is the variability of pitches and ability of batsmen and bowlers to adapt to it.

i do enjoy the sight of Indian batsmen hopping like deer in headlight on fast bouncy pitches...or Aussie batsmen pretending they are harvesting sugarcane with their hard-handed hacks and chops on a crumbling spinning wicket.

 

The home-side domination can be ended, as someone pointed out, by simply eliminating the toss and letting the visiting team choose whether they bat or bowl. 

In some sports, whether you are a home side or a visiting side does matter in terms of regulation. For eg, in ice hockey, home side always gets the first change. 

Ie, for eg, when there is a whistle and stoppage of play (unless its icing), both teams have the option of changing their lines & defence pairings.

Well, in that scenario, both team wants the perfect matchup- if you are defending a 1 goal lead in the 3rd period with 5 min to go and you see Sidney Crosby comming on ice, you want to put your best defensive forward to try and neutralize him.

In such a case, the visiting team has to ALWAYS put their players on the ice first (they get a 4-5 second grace period to put their players on ice and more than that, its a delay of game penalty), which allows the home team to see who is on ice first and then react to the matchup. 

 

There is no reason cricket cannot have rules like this and basically because the home team controls the pitch condition, the visiting team should simply get to deciede if they bat or bowl first.

 

[surajmal]

1 hour ago, maniac said:

Technique or basics is more or less still the same for every batsman across the world....the training comes with practice...foreign players have played outstanding innings on dustbowls/spinning tracks and so have Subcontinent batsmen on bouncy/green tracks

 

If a batsman is not able to adapt to a pitch where he is not used to playing then he is just not good enough.

 

As far as training goes that comes with practice....if you don’t practice or train enough then you will get walloped regardless of the

pitch...case in point the current series.

 

Our bowlers didn’t do well initially at the start but they quickly “adapted”  to the lengths and competed strength to strength...our spinner has done better than their spinner, ...so if batsmen couldn’t adapt whose fault is that?

 Isnt there a euphemism about needing 10000 hrs to become good at something? If you think a training session or 2 is enough to get ready for different playing conditions, I don't know what to say. 

This is pro sports. You want to see both sides playing at their best, otherwise whats the bloody point. 

[Muloghonto]

1 minute ago, surajmal said:

 Isnt there a euphemism about needing 10000 hrs to become good at something? If you think a training session or 2 is enough to get ready for different playing conditions, I don't know what to say. 

This is pro sports. You want to see both sides playing at their best, otherwise whats the bloody point. 

The other factor to consider, is that cricket is suffering greatly due to bat dominating the ball as opposed to it being an even contest. Especially so, in the shorter formats. With standardized pitches, given the bats are the size of tree-trunks these days, it will further accentuate the batting advantage of sides.  

 

Plus, they are pro-sportsmen. if India cannot replicate a fast bouncy pitch for batsmen to practice on, despite having dozens of grounds at the Ranji level, its a failure of the system, not failure of the sport.

 

There is a reason for eg, why WI of the 60s-early 90s were such a strong team (they were not world dominating in the 60s and early 70s but they were competetive in any nation they played). And the reason is variability of pitches. 
Barbados was your standard 'fast and furious' bouncy pitch, Georgetown was your typical 'patta' slow pitch that didn't break apart, Jamaica was more Durban-ish, with fast & seaming tracks, with Port of Spain offering a consistent bounce pitch that turned to variable bounce and/or broke apart later on. 

This is why batsmen like Viv or Lloyd (who was extremely good but not great- just using him as an example so it doesnt just seem like brilliant batsmen can overcome anything) could score heavily both in India and in England. 

 

[Gollum]

In tennis after they started surface homogenization, serve and volley disappeared from the game, now we have similar kind of boring monotonous pushers dominate the rankings. If we standardize pitches in cricket the variety/flavour will be lost. Greatness of Sachin/Viv/Lara level batsmen or Marshall/Mcgrath/Hadlee kinda bowlers was their ability to adapt to different conditions, we may never get to see such specimens if we standardize, already you see how boring and pointless ODI cricket has become, test cricket too will meet the same fate.

[beetle]

9 hours ago, Forever Indian said:

Standardising is not the answer, as the sameness will further reduce the interest factor. In order to reduce the home advantage, tosses can be scrapped and the visiting team asked to decide to bat or bowl. This will automatically reduce home teams tampering the pitch too much to gain advantage as well.

+1

 

[speedheat]

10 hours ago, Forever Indian said:

Standardising is not the answer, as the sameness will further reduce the interest factor.  In order to reduce the home advantage, tosses can be scrapped and the visiting team asked to decide to bat or bowl This will automatically reduce home teams tampering the pitch too much to gain advantage as well.

This is getting lot of popularity, in every cricket discussion I am hearing it now, not a bad idea can be tried,  it also cut down luck factor.

[chewy]

11 hours ago, Forever Indian said:

Standardising is not the answer, as the sameness will further reduce the interest factor. In order to reduce the home advantage, tosses can be scrapped and the visiting team asked to decide to bat or bowl. This will automatically reduce home teams tampering the pitch too much to gain advantage as well.

+1, visiting team should get first dips on what to do

 

also standardise the ball type, either select one of SG, Duke or Kookabura ball, all balls behave differently. Better ICC should get together and vote on using one ball for ALL formats and matches 

 

pitches should not be made the same 

[Gollum]

If we want to eliminate home track bully syndrome better make teams play 3-4 warm ups and boards need to step up to ensure performance in away conditions. May be give more weightage to away wins/draws in the ICC ratings, all this standardization and scrapping of tosses will only tarnish the beauty of test cricket. Imagine if we do away with the toss rule, India will always bat 2nd in matches in India....will get kind of boring because less permutations and combinations, lesser ways to win matches etc....

 

Remember in the last 15 years or so we have had 2 teams that were brilliant overseas, the Aussie team till 2008 and the SA team from 2006 to 2015. Even India (2002-10) and England (2009-2012) have had various degrees of success in alien conditions. So this is not an impossible task, just change the way teams/players get points in the ICC table and there will be more incentive to perform abroad. 

[renjith]

Unpredictability of pitches is an advantage and beauty of the game which most other sports don't have.