It’s players, not pitches that decide matches

Lovers of Test cricket would do well to track the ongoing series between England and Bangladesh. It is suspenseladen and enthralling. England won a see-saw first Test by a narrow 22-run margin. The second, currently underway, looks to be developing into another humdinger. Both have been low-scoring matches, played on tracks that have afforded considerable turn, bite and bounce to spinners. That fast bowler Ben Stokes picked up six wickets in the first Test could be a conundrum, or tribute to his rapidly expanding prowess. Going by the trajectory of Stokes’s career, I would like to believe it is the latter. That is also why I believe too much is made about turning pitches in the sub-continent. If Stokes can succeed with his fast medium bowling, it shows that what is essential is adaptability of high skill to the conditions.

Administrators, curators and influential players from Asian countries usually face flak from overseas teams when the problem, in fact, may be their own inadequacies.

In theory, pitches that favour batsmen and bowlers — pacemen and spinners — at different times and culminating in a taut climax to the match would be ideal. But the history of cricket shows that ‘perfect’ pitches are actually an aberration.

Pitches differ from country to country, and within a country too, could be vastly different from one city to city. How the ‘native’ soil is perceived and treated by the curator impact how a pitch will behave. Weather is a hugely important factor too. Expertise in curating is also not standardised, so there is no guarantee that a groundsman can prepare the same kind of pitch every time. This perhaps explains why predictions about pitches are so often proved wrong!

For the most, curators try and prepare pitched best suited to the prevailing conditions, with a slight tilt admittedly in favour of the ‘home’ team. Nothing wrong in this. In a contest of any sort — business, diplomacy etc — home advantage is always sought, so why not sport?

Of course, unplayable greentops or dustbowls stretches the ‘ethicality’ of the curating process and must be regarded as deviation from the normal. But even this extreme situation is not fundamentally detrimental to the game as some allege; just as pitches being covered today is not antithetical to the original ethos of the game.

Cricket’s charm — particularly in the longest format — is in the imponderables that affect passage of play. This is what challenges batsmen and bowlers technically and temperamentally, leading to expression of high skill and mental toughness that makes sport watchable.

Pitches alone can’t guarantee a match-winning performance. At the highest level, players have to have not just ability, but imagination, acumen and nerve to succeed. Batsmen have failed on featherbeds and bowlers have flopped in spite of the most helpful conditions.

In the 1987 Test against Pakistan at Bengaluru, on a vicious turner, Maninder Singh bamboozled the batsmen, getting 7/27 in the first innings. In the second, he huffed and puffed through 43.5 to get 3/99 as the Pakistan batsmen showed stiff resistance.

I recall Bishen Singh Bedi saying during the Pakistan second innings that Maninder was struggling because he was trying too hard to spin the ball instead of letting the pitch play the tricks. “On a track like this, you have to exercise control, the pitch will do the rest.” This is precisely what Pakistan’s spinners Tauseef Ahmad and Iqbal Qasim did, winning a famous Test for their country by a narrow margin of 16 runs. In the same match, Sunil Gavaskar made 96 in his final and arguably his best Test innings.

The upshot of all this is that conditions matter a great deal in Test cricket, but not as much as how players exploit them or not. Sometimes they can boomerang on the team favoured, as seems to be happening with Bangladesh. Alastair Cook’s team have shown ambition and wherewithal to succeed on slow pitches. If indeed it is necessary considering how England fared here in 201213, their performances in Bangaldesh sends a warning for for the Test series that starts here next month.

Beware India!