Batsmen miss out in cricket's pitch battles (8 August 1999)

8 August 1999

Batsmen miss out in cricket's pitch battles

Nasser Hussain

For the 13th time in England's last 24 Test matches, we have failed to reach a score of 200 in our first innings. That is a fairly grim statistic which we are going to have to change, and quickly, as very few games at this level are won from behind.

In no way am I using the standard of pitches in general as an excuse for this batting trend over the last two or three years. But it's part of the explanation and an area which English cricket has to have a good look at if we are going to be the best Test country again.

The days seem long gone when you would just turn up at a ground in Test or county cricket, look at the wicket and say: "It looks flat and we must bat for two days." In recent years, many of our pitches have been relaid and have already been over-used. They also seem susceptible to cracking because of the type of soil involved in their preparation.

As a consequence, our groundsmen are becoming paranoid that, after a couple of days, the ball will bounce unevenly, as at Edgbaston, Lord's and here. Hence even when the surface looks flat they are dampening it down in the hope the pitch will stay together.

We are almost getting towards the state we were in on England's last tour in the West Indies. Wickets are either starting damp or becoming uneven later in the game owing to the cracks and it wasn't just England's batsmen who had a hard time over there. Not even Brian Lara made a hundred.

Therefore, the captains winning the toss in the three Tests of this series - the three captains, I should say - have all batted first in the worrying knowledge that the surface might not last and have found themselves encountering a hidden dampness. When this has been combined with the overhead conditions on the three first days, and a ball which Ted Dexter recently described in The Daily Telegraph as perfect for seam and swing bowling, batting first has been difficult every time - for both teams, though I admit New Zealand passed 200 at Edgbaston.

Playing on pitches like that the whole time starts to wear you down, and your confidence and technique. We could use Greg Blewett and Michael Slater, and the difficult seasons they have had for Yorkshire and Derbyshire, as classic examples of the effect that pitches can have on anybody's batting.

In Australia, they are brought up on good wickets where they know that if they play well with a straight bat, the bowler will have to come up with something special to get them out. Blewett, when I saw him at Headingley in Essex's championship match there, looked like someone who had been playing on an up-and-down wicket all year, and was struggling. When you're in that sort of mindset you tend to go at the ball with the attitude of "let's get them before they get me".

I went into the Lord's Test after I'd been playing on good wickets at Chelmsford and was in good form. Hence my mind was at ease, and my judgment told me that occupation of the crease will always lead to runs, even on such a difficult day. However, when you are out of touch, as Mark Ramprakash and Alec Stewart were at the time, it makes you want to put bat on ball, go for big shots too soon and try to find some boundaries, to ease the mental frustration.

At Old Trafford, Ramps has shown that it is time at the crease that leads to confidence. I hear everyone say "Get in the nets and work harder" but this is not always as easy as it should be. Generally, throughout the country, the pressures on groundsmen to look after their squares has led to substandard net conditions on most grounds. On the Test grounds this summer the nets have been good on the Tuesday and Wednesday but have deteriorated.

This is not a captain of his country making excuses or whingeing, but a plea to the authorities. And it is not just England's batsmen who are affected but county cricket as a whole. You only have to look at first-innings scores in the championship and totals of 120 are commonplace, yet no county have been docked 25 points. There are some Australian batsmen who have been scoring a lot of runs but they tend to be the ones who are playing on good pitches, like Jamie Cox at Taunton, Stuart Law at Chelmsford and Michael di Venuto at Hove. Even Justin Langer has started to go off the boil.

The conditions that produce the best techniques are the ones where the batsmen know they can bat all day. Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid were brought up on the right surfaces, and they make their hundreds. But all too often in this country, the unplayable ball can come along even though your mind is spot on and you produce a perfectly straight bat.

At Essex, Law says that, instead of trying to hang in on one of these up-and-down pitches, he'll go after it because sooner or later he'll get a good one. He also says that however poor our wickets, he comes back year after year and sees the same players with the same faults in their technique and can't believe they haven't done something about it. Whether this is due to lack of time and facilities or lack of application, each individual will make his own judgment.

Australian net facilities are not on the grounds themselves, as they so often are in this country, so you can go for a net over there when the game is going on. Plus they have more time to go to the nets and improve. At present, all our batsmen are doing is practising poor technique in game situations.

It is no coincidence that people such as Mike Atherton, who have had a long time away from the game, have come back refreshed and, more importantly, with a clear mind and without these infectious technical blemishes in their batting.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)