With Cricket Australia facing multi-million dollar losses from the two-day Ashes Tests in Perth and Melbourne, the quality of Australian pitches continues to come under intense scrutiny, as does the technical skills of the players they ultimately produce.
In the latest All Over Bar The Cricket podcast, James Brayshaw, Matthew Hayden and Greg Blewett have had a fascinating discussion, lamenting changes in the ways domestic pitches are prepared ahead of the fifth and final Ashes Test in Sydney.
Former Sheffield Shield player and Channel 7 commentator James Brayshaw summed things up with colourful succinctness.
“You prepare sh*t pitches, you make sh*t cricketers, it’s as simple as that,” he declared, suggesting the quality of many Shield pitches served up around Australia has declined sharply since his playing days.
“We’ve always had good hard flat pitches (in Australia) that you learn to take wickets on as a fast bowler and as a spinner,” he continued.
“You also learn to bat big as a batsman, you make a pile of runs and kick the door down to play for Australia—that’s not happening at the moment because too often Shield pitches aren’t up to it, they’re not good enough.”
Former Test opener Matthew Hayden was equally as vocal, also pointing to the negative impact increasingly green and grassy wickets at Sheffield Shield level were having on the development of spinners across the country.
“If you want to win the World Test Championship, when you’re (needing to win) on away venues, particularly on the subcontinent, you’ve got to have a world class spinner,” Hayden said.
“We’ve developed one in Nathan Lyon and now we’re trying to develop additional spinners across the formats—and we don’t have them at hand in my opinion, largely because the Sheffield Shield wickets are starting extremely green and grassy, that’s the nature of drop-in wickets. Something has to give.”
Retired 46-Test veteran Greg Blewett agreed and said the issue hasn’t just emerged this summer.
“We’ve been talking about it for years, but maybe this (the two-day Test finishes in Perth and Melbourne) is the line in the sand,” Blewett added, before warning of another likely change that could potentially make things even worse.
“The other sad thing that will happen as a result of this is the curators are going to lose control of their pitches, there’s no doubt that Cricket Australia are going to employ someone to go from venue to venue and oversee the preparation.”
While James Brayshaw felt that could be a positive move, Hayden agreed wholeheartedly with Blewett describing the move as ‘complete frog sh*t’.
“It’s a very relevant point to the tradition of the game (for curators to prepare pitches independently), it’s also really important that you give accountability to the people you employ,” Hayden said.
“We are a country of middle managers and if you put another person into the mix, a boffin, you tell me how a boffin is (going to improve things)—is he going to get down on his knees and measure the grass?
“You put another person in the ring and it will make our pitches a lot worse.”
Hayden also warned of conflict between ground curators and supervisors.
“There are venues around the world that do that including the BCCI (India), and a lot of times you get great resistance between the two roles,” he said.
“It’s like a building site, everyone hates that person (who comes in and tells them what to do), it creates a poor ecosystem.”
James Brayshaw then concluded the pitch discussion as succinctly as he began.
“We cannot have 36 wickets falling inside two days in a Test match, ever again.”
Surely few Test cricket fans would argue with that.