All the same...

Are pitches becoming flatter around the world? © Getty Images

Cast your mind back to the Adelaide Test match. Briefly the familiar sound of Australians berating the standard of English cricket was drowned out by the less well-known sound of the hosts turning, as it were, on their own and lamenting the standard of the country's pitches - a complaint already growing elsewhere.

The conspiracy theory runs as follows: international cricket's governing bodies are now so dependent on huge broadcasting deals that they are desperate for Test matches to last the full five days in order to keep sponsors happy and to avoid having to pay out large refunds to the ticket-buying public. To this end instructions have gone out to groundsmen that they must prepare pitches accordingly. The result is that most pitches are slow, low tracks - not much fun for any bowler of quality.

At one stage during the Ashes the notion that lifeless pitches were killing the game was being repeated so often it threatened to become as much an established fact as Bradman's batting average.

Even Glenn McGrath in his newspaper column in Sydney's Daily Telegraph took time off from questioning the competence of England batsmen to complain: "My biggest fear in Australian cricket is we are losing the home-ground advantage because of the docile pitches being served up."

This was countered by Australia's subsequent rush to an unbeatable 3-0 lead in the Ashes as well as Alastair Smart's piece in last month's TWC that showed every international side to be stronger at home during the last decade than away, with Australia enjoying an 89% series win-rate on their own pitches compared with 68% on their travels.

Chris Wood, the ECB's pitches consultant, says there is no universal theory when it comes to explaining the characteristics of different surfaces. "There are a number of reasons, certainly regarding English pitches. One obviously was the change from uncovered to covered pitches. I've been in the game 40 years and I know a lot of old pros who'd like to go back to uncovered pitches because of the variety they offered. But it just isn't going to happen.

"Also, since the 1960s all the county squares in England have seen some form of reconstruction using a proprietary loam product, the majority with a single brand of cricket loam."

Geoff Lawson, the former Australian fast bowler, has commissioned a study into the effectiveness of modern cricket bats

Add in developments in bat technology and the trend for shortening boundaries and it starts to become harder to blame the pitches for three of the four highest individual Test scores in history being made in the 21st century.

There are other factors. The only real change in ball manufacturing is the move from hand-stitching to machine-stitching which, the sages say, leads to the shine disappearing more quickly. Geoff Lawson, the former Australian fast bowler, has commissioned a study into the effectiveness of modern cricket bats, which combine the weight of a claymore with the pick-up of a foil, compared with those being used in the 1990s.

"The whole balance and dynamics of the game have changed," Lawson told the Adelaide Advertiser. "Balls are coming off the bat 20% faster than they did a few years ago."

Of course, there could simply be a dearth of great bowlers in world cricket now but Australia changed notions of how many runs can be scored in a Test match day, so perhaps there needs to be a compensating adjustment for what constitutes economical bowling. One thing that cannot be known yet is the effect, if any, of allowing bowlers 15 degrees of straightening in delivery.

Complaining about pitches is nothing new. Not long ago an account of a Yorkshire season would be incomplete without mention of Keith Boyce's struggles to reform the Headingley pitch while his Trent Bridge counterpart, Ron Allsopp, found himself criticised for acceding to instructions from Clive Rice to produce surfaces tailor-made for Nottinghamshire's pace attack. And, as long as pitch penalties revolve around the number of wickets falling in a day rather than runs scored, it is hard to blame county groundsmen for not going out of their way to favour the bowlers.

Administrators start to worry when a pitch doesn't last © Getty Images

As Wood, who has been in his post since 1999, describes advances in maintenance equipment, the readiness of groundsmen to share knowledge and the amount of research into grass types, the growing uniformity of pitches appears to have come about by accident rather than malicious design. "One of my jobs," he says, "is to encourage groundsmen to prepare good, cricket wickets, ones that have pace and bounce early on, with some early help for the quick bowlers but which take spin later. "The groundsmen I work with are skilled professionals who have all taken on board scientific and innovative developments in knowledge and machinery and to a man want to produce the best possible pitches. But I accept that some of cricket's most exciting matches have taken place on less than ideal surfaces. That's the conundrum, isn't it?"

And one place where the global pitch conspiracy certainly breaks down is New Zealand where the seamers, according to Daniel Vettori at least, still hold sway. "There's nothing to look forward to as a spinner in New Zealand," he told the country's Herald after his side's Test win over Sri Lanka in December. "There's not a huge role to play on the pitches over here." Needless to say, he took 10 wickets in the second Test.

It has always been easy for those who have a huge knowledge of montmorillonite clay (the main setting agent for Australian pitches) to have a go at groundsmen. But it was significant that all the complaints about pitches in Australia died a death after Shane Warne's last-day performance at Adelaide. The best players can cope, which is one reason why Michael Holding's 14 wickets on a benign Oval pitch in 1976 remains such a celebrated achievement.

"Great players adapt," Dean Jones told Australia's Herald Sun. "Dennis Lillee and Malcolm Marshall would bowl wide of the crease. They bowled slower balls. They parked their egos at the gate." Being accused of egocentricity by Jones, it is no wonder McGrath called it a day.