Perth will be extremely lively for the opening red-ball game of summer, the MCG’s Ashes green mamba is set to lose a little of its venom, and the recent spinning deck at the SCG has provided a window into what the New Year’s Test pitch may become.
As Cricket Australia’s head of cricket operations and scheduling, Peter Roach is the link man between pitch curators across the country, asking what they are trying to produce and gently calibrating the balances between bat and ball, but also the traditional variety of surfaces across the country.
Here comes Scott Boland. There goes Joe Root. There goes England.Credit:Quin Rooney, Getty Images
His expectation – as distinct from directive – is that Melbourne will be somewhat less treacherous for batting than the surface on which Scott Boland laid waste to England. Roach balances this with his view that Test cricket is often now played at a higher, riskier tempo than it once was.
“If you look back at last year, they would say that the balance was probably just in favour of the bowler and they would look at that and say if we want to err one way this year, it’s probably a little bit back towards the batter,” Roach told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
“It’s certainly not a directive to say ‘we went too far’, we still want that contest between bat and ball, but it’s trying to adapt to how the game is being played today, which I believe is different to how it was played three or four years ago.
“We saw that a bit last year in the Ashes where we had some wickets that gave something to the bowlers. Twenty years ago, batters may have been more inclined to settle down, whereas now the players are saying ‘we can take it on’. Travis Head was a great example, made some terrific hundreds, and that’s a different way the game’s being played.”
A sharply turning Sheffield Shield surface at the SCG was, Roach believes, at the pointier end of what the ground’s handlers will be trying to replicate at Test match time. That will aid Australian selectors with four Tests in India to follow in February and March.
“We’ve been really firm on making sure our venues have a really clear position of what they want to achieve, and that’s they, not us telling them,” Roach said. “And ideally that means they can replicate that when they get other first-class cricket in the season, so they’re not switching and changing.
“My logic says if you’re trying to prepare the same pitch time and again, you’re going to get better at doing it. It was great to see the SCG spin. One of my personal views is why we’re successful in Australia because we’re sitting here in Perth in probably the hardest, fastest pitch in the world, and we often finish in Sydney on a wicket that turns more.”
As for Australia’s players, there is a consensus that the best surface of last summer’s Ashes was that prepared for the Gabba.
“Last summer the Gabba pitch was a very good wicket, it had a little bit in it, but there were a few people who got themselves in and scored big runs,” Marnus Labuschagne said. “So that’s probably the benchmark, the Gabba was very nice in terms of the balance.”
