Lifeless pitches

[Parkside]

From the Cricketer Why we have lifeless outages - Worcester Groundsman

"The flatter you get it, the higher your pitch mark is going to be," says Manfield. "There is no reward for trying to inject a bit of pace or anything like that, because the penalty is right there. The ratings are just geared towards flat cricket, not result-driven cricket."

A week ago, not a single Division One fixture reached the fourth innings. Four games in, Northamptonshire sit second in Division Two with a single win. None of this is new exactly, and April has long been an excellent time to bat. But the threat of a penalty has understandably bred conservatism: unimaginative regulations lead to unimaginative pitches, which lead to unimaginative cricket.

Conversely, Hampshire, bottom of the top flight, were defeated by Somerset in the third week of the campaign on a surface that produced

You must be logged on to see external links

. It was rated as 'good', but for what? Somerset took 19 points, Hampshire four. If they'd conformed with the majority and managed a high-scoring draw, they might well be midtable.

Indeed, if you drew all 14 games, taking eight points from each and seven in bonuses, you'd be in the running to win the title. Last year, it would have been enough for promotion.
There are six levels to the regulations: 'very good', 'good', 'above average', 'below average', 'poor', and 'unfit'. But the two that matter most sit in the middle.

"There are 18 head groundsmen," says Manfield. "They all have stuff going on in their lives, stresses up to their eyes, all this pitch mark business. You have all of this stress, and all that you're hoping for is an 'above average' mark. That is the reality. Like, is that it? That is enough to keep you going into the next one – not 'good', not 'very good'. Just 'above average'. You're hoping that you're in the right side of that category, but then someone will come up to you during a 12-hour day and tell you that their garden looks better than this."

An 'above average' surface is described in the regulations as having "at most, more than occasional unevenness of bounce on the third or fourth playing days of the match. At most, regular seam movement (at any stage) on only the first playing day of the match. Lacking carry and/or bounce on the third or fourth playing days of the match. Little or no turn from the protected area throughout the match or considerable turn from the protected area on the first or second playing days of the match or excessive turn from the protected area on the third or fourth playing days of the match".

A 'below average' surface is described as having "at most, more than occasional unevenness of bounce on the first or second playing days of the match. At most, regular seam movement (at any stage) on the first and second or further playing days of the match. Lacking carry and/or bounce on the first or second playing days of the match. Excessive turn from the protected area on the first or second playing days of the match".

Nuances separate the two, but with nothing in between, only the subjective opinion of the match referee stands between clubs and a robust penalty. The regulations, for instance, refer to 'regular seam' but, as Manfield points out, that is on its own a meaningless, unquantifiable term. "The document itself could do with clearing up," he says. "If you ask a groundsman if they're happy with the pitch marking system or the document, they're just going to say no."

A 'very good' pitch, meanwhile, is one with "at most" occasional uneven bounce or seam movement, consistent carry throughout and a gradual trickle towards spin. A 'good' pitch has "good carry and/or bounce throughout the match", and Surrey's for their

You must be logged on to see external links

was ranked in that category by Steve Davis, the match referee and former Test umpire. Tom Haines retired hurt after being hit on the head, and there were several more body blows, but there were also more than 1,100 runs in the game and four centuries.

 

[Durhamfootman]

it also noted, either in the article or on the cricketer weekly podcast, that grounds like New Rd with perennial flooding problems tend to be given more leeway than other grounds. I think they said, from memory, that there were 7 results in 8 games at New Rd in the season they got promotion. That number of result pitches in a season at other grounds might have raised enough eyebrows for the ECB to look more in depth at the pitches, during inspections

Losing all points for pitches rated below a certain level will almost inevitably lead to snore draw matches, but at the same time, how often have Somerset have won matches inside 2 days at Taunton with two spinners, working in tandem, taking wickets in the first session of the match? The 8 point penalties they sometimes received still left them with at least the same number of points as they would have got playing out a draw on a lifeless pitch. The only danger they faced was in not winning those games and then getting the penalties, but their players had had lots of practice playing on those sorts of pitches and they tended not to lose them

 

[Raymondo]

The problem with the ECB where the running of County Cricket is concerned, is that they’re far too easily manipulated when it comes to fads, or the trying out of niche ideas that might improve the national side. Every time someone gets a stupid idea in their head, the County Championship suffers because there is the place that the experiment must take place.

In the last decade or so we’ve had different numbers of teams in each division, a 16 game season, a 14 game season, a toss and then an uncontested toss and now back to a toss again. We’ve had floodlit match trials, we’ve had a nonsensical kookaburra experiment, we’ve had vast changes to the points structure and also the bonus point structure. We had a demand for pitches to be flatter to assist with spin bowling, but teams were deducted points when it span too much and there was a clamour to have pitches to help out and out quick bowling by nullifying the dibbly-cobblers - with a view to being competitive in Australia and all the Aussies did was to beat us with English style seamers and a wicket keeper up to the stumps.

This pitch thing in my view is another fad, because whilst nobody wants to see pitches that are dangerous, or which produce a result inside 5 sessions - because that means it isn’t a fair contest between bat and ball, we’ve now got the situation where pitches are so dull and lifeless that it is near impossible to get a result. Today, yet another game involving Surrey (not their fault at all) won’t even make the fourth innings. Lifeless pitches where a game could last for 6/7 days before a result is produced will kill county cricket off long before pitches that produce a result somewhere between Tea on Day 2 and the end of Day 3.

I think this idea to deduct all the points a team gains in the event of a substandard pitch is ridiculous. Or atleast they need to take a very serious look at the criteria, because as the OP outlines, a ‘very good’ pitch by their marking system is a game that would take 6/7 days to produce a result and I’m fairly confident that anyone who has any interest in watching/playing red ball cricket would agree that kind of pitch certainly is NOT ‘very good’.