Quality of pitches in Australia??

[Texan]

Every time a Test match in India ends early, there is the usual clamor around pitch being of poor quality. But now in Australia, 3 of the last 7 Tests have ended in two days. On the other hand, in the entire history of Indian cricket, a Test match has got over in two days only on two occasions. 

 

So, why no questions about the quality of wickets in Australia?

 

https://www.cricinfo.com/records/shortest-matches-by-days-283076

[zen]

Because most of the short games in Australia in the 2020s were played against SENA teams at venues known to traditionally help pace bowlers without doctoring the pitch such as leaving them unprepared. Those tests may include pink ball tests as well. Also there could be impact of T20s on tests with many players playing that format as well. 

In short, there can be various reasons. The shorter games in Australia or elsewhere do not justify India’s tendency to offer doctored pitches, which is what people do not prefer. 

Edited August 24 by zen

[gattaca]

18 minutes ago, zen said:

Because most of the short games in Australia in the 2020s were played against SENA teams at venues known to traditionally help pace bowlers without doctoring the pitch such as leaving them unprepared. Those tests may include pink ball tests as well. Also there could be impact of T20s on tests with many players playing that format as well. 

In short, there can be various reasons. The shorter games in Australia or elsewhere do not justify India’s tendency to offer doctored pitches, which is what people do not prefer. 

So leaving green  grass on wicket is not doctoring. In SENA countries weather already helps fast bowlers with swing once you leave thick green grass it swings crazy how is that not doctoring. 

Edited August 24 by gattaca

[zen]

34 minutes ago, gattaca said:

So leaving green  grass on wicket is not doctoring. In SENA countries weather already helps fast bowlers with swing once you leave thick green grass it swings crazy how is that not doctoring. 

Leaving grass is not necessarily doctoring as pitches (soil dependent) can need a level of grass to hold it together. When the sun comes out, it can gradually make the grass dry, giving the traditional pitch. In environments where it rains frequently, grass can help to protect against soil erosion too. 
 

In India too, we can get to see relatively green pitches especially in domestic cricket. 
 

Btw, “swing” occurs due to overhead conditions when the ball is in air not pitched. 
 

Leaving a pitch unprepared or underprepared so it begins to break from day 1 (and many times even in session 1-2) is doctoring. 
 

 

Edited August 24 by zen

[cowboysfan]

I cant fault Australia ,they good completely outplayed on a flat wicket so they went with a pitch where they could simply outbowl Bangladeshs,this would not have worked against a better batting lineup.

[gattaca]

7 hours ago, zen said:

Leaving grass is not necessarily doctoring as pitches (soil dependent) can need a level of grass to hold it together. When the sun comes out, it can gradually make the grass dry, giving the traditional pitch. In environments where it rains frequently, grass can help to protect against soil erosion too. 
 

In India too, we can get to see relatively green pitches especially in domestic cricket. 
 

Btw, “swing” occurs due to overhead conditions when the ball is in air not pitched. 
 

Leaving a pitch unprepared or underprepared so it begins to break from day 1 (and many times even in session 1-2) is doctoring. 
 

 

Pitches in SENA are harder don’t breakdown like in the India. They have more moisture in the air no excuses for the pitch breakdown. It infact makes sense to leave grass in subcontinent 

[zen]

1 hour ago, gattaca said:

Pitches in SENA are harder don’t breakdown like in the India. They have more moisture in the air no excuses for the pitch breakdown. It infact makes sense to leave grass in subcontinent 

Does not matter as keeping grass is not doctoring. Yes, subcontinent can use grass too as I mentioned in my previous post. 

[gattaca]

3 hours ago, zen said:

Does not matter as keeping grass is not doctoring. Yes, subcontinent can use grass too as I mentioned in my previous post. 

Doctoring is favoring your bowlers either you don’t water it much and leave it dry or leave grass on pitch. Subcontinent teams can easily the heat causes breakdown faster.  The goal is to help your bowlers. So it is doctoring even if you leave grass.

Edited August 24 by gattaca

[zen]

2 hours ago, gattaca said:

Doctoring is favoring your bowlers either you don’t water it much and leave it dry or leave grass on pitch. Subcontinent teams can easily the heat causes breakdown faster.  The goal is to help your bowlers. So it is doctoring even if you leave grass.

 

A pitch left unprepared or underprepared that starts its counter immediately to breaking down is doctoring. It is not just about unnatural turn (or even ball keeping straight) but also about inconsistent bounce. Many times, the bowlers focus primarily on simply landing the ball and let the surface dish out the variety. 
 

Aus (and most other SENA teams if you want to extend the discussion) do not do that in such a fashion - leaving grass is fine.
 

To swing the ball (in air), you need skills. To reverse swing, you need to also bowl at certain pace while maintaining the ball. 

Edited August 24 by zen

[iroman]

2 hours ago, gattaca said:

Doctoring is favoring your bowlers either you don’t water it much and leave it dry or leave grass on pitch. Subcontinent teams can easily the heat causes breakdown faster.  The goal is to help your bowlers. So it is doctoring even if you leave grass.

Fully agree with @gattaca on this.  

 

Nowhere in the rule book it says "excessive grass supporting seamers is ok" but "loose and dry top layer that supports spinners is not ok".  England and Australia have always used the world "doctored" to convince sub continent (SC) teams that those pitches give "unfair" advantage to the host teams.  

 

SENA preparing seaming, bouncy strips to help their pacers is just as fair as SC teams making slow turners.  I am glad modern Indian cricketers and administrators don't comply to this old colonial subservient mindset-where everything uttered by English is gospel irrespective of logic.

 

Bad pitches are bad pitches.  Too much support for batters, seamers or spinners, is bad. The objective way to judge it is how long the match takes to finish. A two day finish is a joke.  Similarly, a 5 day match that only produces 14 wickets is just as terrible. 

 

A 10 year old also knows grass is needed to hold the wicket together. Such an important job as pitch preparation is not given to kids. It is given to curators who know exactly "how much" grass is needed to last 5 days. You keep way more grass  than that, and the match may get done in 2 or 3 days. You keep less, and the match may only see 20 total wickets on a batting paradise. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I would rather see an exciting 2 day match than a boring 5 day draw.  Also I prefer pace bowling way more than spin.  But the discussion here is about "excessive grass not being a problem". Intentional or unintentional (weather induced), a poor pitch is a poor pitch. 

 

I must add that the entire pitch should be uniform. One of the recent test series against England had an Indian pitch with dramatically different appearance near the batsmen (full length) compared to more of a good length.  It was clearly visible on day 1 and had the commentators talking about it a lot.  That is the worst. Non-uniform pitches as delibrate as that are just not acceptable.

Edited August 24 by iroman

[zen]

Below is how pitches are doctored in India:

 

A "doctored" cricket pitch in India is prepared by using specific techniques like selective watering, targeted rolling, and localized drying to create conditions that favor home spinners and disadvantage touring batters. 

 

Methods of Pitch Doctoring

• Selective Watering: Curators water only specific areas of the pitch—such as the good-length areas outside a left-hander's or right-hander's off-stump—while leaving other parts bone dry. This makes certain patches break up and crumble much faster. 
• Targeted Rolling: Heavy rollers are used selectively or withheld on specific strips. Skipping rolling on a dampened spot keeps the surface loose, creating variable bounce and early wear. 
• Grass Shaving: Mowing or completely shaving off grass from the center strip prevents seam movement and exposes dry soil to extreme heat and friction from the first day. 
• Using Specific Soils: Selecting soil mixes with high clay content or sand composition based on how quickly the home management wants the surface to deteriorate into a turning track.
• Artificial Drying: Using industrial fans, heaters, or chemical treatments under the sun to bake specific sections of the 22-yard strip ahead of a match. 

[zen]

Why “Leaving Grass” is not doctoring:

 

 

Leaving grass on a cricket pitch is a normal part of natural pitch preparation rather than "doctoring" (artificial tampering) because grass serves a structural and protective purpose for the soil.

 

Why Grass is Natural, Not Doctoring

• Holding the Soil Together: Grass roots bind the soil particles on the 22-yard strip. This natural cohesion prevents the pitch from crumbling or breaking apart too early in a match.
• Controlling Moisture: Leaving a layer of live grass helps shade the surface. It retains proper soil moisture under hot sun, allowing the pitch to bind evenly rather than drying out into dust on day one.
• Ensuring Consistent Bounce: A natural grass covering cushions the ball's impact. This promotes even pace, reliable carry, and predictable bounce instead of dangerous uneven bounce.
• Protecting the Surface: Natural wear and tear happens as a match progresses. Rolling, weather, and foot traffic gradually kill the grass and break up the pitch naturally over four or five days.
• Providing Standard Balance: Curators leave standard amounts of grass (such as 7mm to 10mm) to assist fast bowlers slightly in the first session before the pitch settles into a good surface for batting. Doctoring crosses the line when chemicals, excessive artificial drying, or selective digging are used to explicitly manipulate outcomes against nature.

 

 

[iroman]

13 minutes ago, zen said:

Below is how pitches are doctored in India:

 

A "doctored" cricket pitch in India is prepared by using specific techniques like selective watering, targeted rolling, and localized drying to create conditions that favor home spinners and disadvantage touring batters. 

 

Methods of Pitch Doctoring

• Selective Watering: Curators water only specific areas of the pitch—such as the good-length areas outside a left-hander's or right-hander's off-stump—while leaving other parts bone dry. This makes certain patches break up and crumble much faster. 
• Targeted Rolling: Heavy rollers are used selectively or withheld on specific strips. Skipping rolling on a dampened spot keeps the surface loose, creating variable bounce and early wear. 
• Grass Shaving: Mowing or completely shaving off grass from the center strip prevents seam movement and exposes dry soil to extreme heat and friction from the first day. 
• Using Specific Soils: Selecting soil mixes with high clay content or sand composition based on how quickly the home management wants the surface to deteriorate into a turning track.
• Artificial Drying: Using industrial fans, heaters, or chemical treatments under the sun to bake specific sections of the 22-yard strip ahead of a match. 

I agree with the text above. Anything "selective", "localized", "specific" in pitch preparation is non-uniform. I would call it doctoring, and unacceptable. Below is the image from that match I referred.  

 

But a uniform (all sections of the strip are the same) pitch, is not doctoring just because it is a turner where the match doesn't last 4 or 5 days. 

 

 

Edited August 24 by iroman

[gattaca]

@zen you are funny. You are showing a definition written by a gora to justify your point. You have to use logic to make the determination. I can say colonism is the best because it brought culture and order to India. Would you agree with this ? 

Edited August 24 by gattaca

[rollingstoned]

7 hours ago, zen said:

Why “Leaving Grass” is not doctoring:

 

 

Leaving grass on a cricket pitch is a normal part of natural pitch preparation rather than "doctoring" (artificial tampering) because grass serves a structural and protective purpose for the soil.

 

Why Grass is Natural, Not Doctoring

• Holding the Soil Together: Grass roots bind the soil particles on the 22-yard strip. This natural cohesion prevents the pitch from crumbling or breaking apart too early in a match.
• Controlling Moisture: Leaving a layer of live grass helps shade the surface. It retains proper soil moisture under hot sun, allowing the pitch to bind evenly rather than drying out into dust on day one.
• Ensuring Consistent Bounce: A natural grass covering cushions the ball's impact. This promotes even pace, reliable carry, and predictable bounce instead of dangerous uneven bounce.
• Protecting the Surface: Natural wear and tear happens as a match progresses. Rolling, weather, and foot traffic gradually kill the grass and break up the pitch naturally over four or five days.
• Providing Standard Balance: Curators leave standard amounts of grass (such as 7mm to 10mm) to assist fast bowlers slightly in the first session before the pitch settles into a good surface for batting. Doctoring crosses the line when chemicals, excessive artificial drying, or selective digging are used to explicitly manipulate outcomes against nature.

 

 

Just like drying the pitch deliberately need not but can be doctoring, leaving extra grass on the pitch and watering it can be natural but can also be doctoring. No need to use baisakhiyas if you are capable of simple logic. 

[vvvslaxman]

8 hours ago, gattaca said:

@zen you are funny. You are showing a definition written by a gora to justify your point. You have to use logic to make the determination. I can say colonism is the best because it brought culture and order to India. Would you agree with this ? 

 

Ashwin mentioned in the interview the wear and tear has to happen by 3rd day. But when India tours they are watering in such a way that , pitch deterioration starts on day8 or 9. They delay the deterioration to neutralize spin threat. That is kind of a pitch doctoring. NZ did the same in 2002 series with drop-in pitches where batting was near unplayable. Explanation by stephen fleming was they wanted tokeep India down in the world cup. Ironically India thumped NZ in the world cup. 

[vvvslaxman]

Australia completely altered the nature of an SCG pitch and made it seamer friendly in the bGT series which they would have lost but for Bumrah's injury. Australia goes great length to preserve their home domination. SA is even worse.

[zen]

10 hours ago, gattaca said:

@zen you are funny. You are showing a definition written by a gora to justify your point. You have to use logic to make the determination. I can say colonism is the best because it brought culture and order to India. Would you agree with this ? 

Gora, Kala, …, …,  

[gattaca]

3 minutes ago, zen said:

Gora, Kala, …, …,  

You are again missing the point. Have you even seen the pitches ditched out to India during 2002 India vs NZ like VVS pointed out. The pitch was greener than outfield. The question is why someone wrote it that doctoring is only is in subcontinent. Everyone does because some English or Aussie wrote it you consider that only the truth ? 

Edited August 25 by gattaca

[zen]

5 minutes ago, gattaca said:

You are again missing the point. 

There is no point but to justify doctoring in India by hook or crook - whataboutusm, creating sefenations, through desi logic (a version of Lahori logic), making up definitions, gora/kala, …, … , 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 25 by zen