Life's a pitch

So here we were at Lahore, witnessing a Test played on, if we were to believe the cricketers, the flattest of surfaces. As the game wore on, the pitch got more and more attention, with everyone talking about the importance of producing a 'sporting wicket'.

Dravid, justifiably so, refused to criticise the pitch, speaking in detail about the various horticultural aspects involved in pitch preparation. "It’s got to do with nature, with soil, with binding, with clay, with rolling ..." How, one must ask, can we expect an ideal pitch when there are so many factors to take care of? And as Younis reasoned, had Pakistan’s batsmen played shoddy strokes and rolled over, not many would have even talked about the pitch.

So it’s all clear. Unless we have an absolute cracker of a contest, someone needs to be blamed at the end of the game. If a team loses, great; if there’s rain, best; if light poses a problem, super; if it turns a lot, blame the pitch (remember Australia in Mumbai 2004?); if it moves around alarmingly, blame the pitch (remember India in New Zealand in 2003?); if batsmen feast to their heart’s content, blame the pitch. Unlike most other sports, it’s such an easy target.

And what makes all this even better is, as Dravid said, it’s almost impossible to prepare a pitch to one’s exact requirements. So what kind of pitches can one easily prepare? Simple, silly. An under-prepared one.