Newlands — the latest in the never-ending debate on pitches

Jaiswal… facing the music.
| Photo Credit: AFP

As yet another wicket tumbled in the second Test at the Newlands Cricket Ground, Mark Nicholas, the MCC president, former England-A and Hampshire captain and now one of the most distinct voices in the game, told The Hindu: “I don’t really think it is the best thing for Test cricket to have a Test match over in a day and a half. Four days is fine, three days is acceptable but a day and a half is not good for any of us really, the fun as it might have been, and the amount of records it has set has been amazing.”

Among those records was the shortest completed match in Test history. The previous record – South Africa was also at its receiving end – was set by Australia in 1932. If it took the Aussies to win 656 balls, India needed 14 less.

“A lot of pitches improve a bit,” Nicholas said. “The first morning here it looked almost as if there was a bit of moisture. There was uneven bounce and the movement from the fresh green of grass. The pitch was heavily weighted in favour of the bowler. I don’t think it was a good pitch, but not an impossible pitch. You can’t make a hundred or 40 on an impossible pitch.”

Nicholas was referring to Aiden Markram, who made a stunning 106 off 103 balls, and Virat Kohli, who made 46. None of the 20 other batters featured in the match touched 40.

He said he wouldn’t go as far as to call Newlands a bad pitch. “The problem with the pitch was that you were going to get at some stage a ball that you would be rather lucky enough to play and miss it or it would go and hit your gloves and pop over the short-leg’s head; it depended on your luck,” said Nicholas. “It wasn’t the right pitch for a Test match, but I don’t think it was a horror but I won’t go call it a horror. It had a lot of pace. I have seen a lot of cricket here, but I have never seen the ball move so quickly off the seam.”

At the press conferences after the Test match, India’s captain Rohit Sharma, South Africa’s coach Shukri Conrad and batting consultant Ashwell Prince weren’t as generous in their assessment of the Newlands pitch. Both the South Africans seemed – understandably enough – upset that the pitch was so difficult to bat on in the opening session. The host, which had won the toss and chose to bat first, couldn’t even last the session.

Rohit, who had reasons to feel happy and proud that his team did handle the tough conditions better than the home side and scored India’s first ever victory at the venue, chose the occasion to refer to the less-than-satisfactory ratings given to Indian wickets in the past. He said it wasn’t right that there would be criticism only if the wicket assisted spin – and not pace – from day one.

But, the general consensus here is that it wasn’t a deliberate ploy to make the wicket too pace-friendly. It had more to do with the inexperience of the curator, Braam Mong, who isn’t a permanent employee of the Western Province Cricket Association (WPCA) that is responsible for the Newlands ground. And it was his first Test match.

Nobody expected the pitch to behave the way it did. South Africa’s coach had told this correspondent, on the eve of the match, that he was expecting it to turn in the latter stage of the match. Remember, the host didn’t choose to bowl first, and that a spinner – Keshav Maharaj —had been included in the team.

Neither could the WPCA have wanted a pitch that would have robbed itself of the ticket sales for the maximum days at a time when it is facing financial issues. The food vendors too have suffered losses, according to reports in the local media.

The debate on pitches is not going to die anytime soon. In fact, we might be hearing a lot about it before long, with India hosting England in a five-match Test series.