The 4th round of the county championship fixtures has now concluded. The weather has been fantastic. The pitches, however, have not.
All of the 1st division fixtures ended in very boring and obdurate draws; it’s almost absurd to think that Essex’s first innings total of 409 was the lowest score of a team batting first in all four matches. Glamorgan made 440, Warwickshire 459 and Sussex 502. Now, there’s nothing wrong with big first-inning scores; that’s how you win games of 4/5 day matches. It’s just that the pitches did not deteriorate over the remaining days of the game.
Notts did follow on against Warwickshire, but they piled up an eye-watering 537/7 in their second innings over the course of 116 overs. This should not be the case in a second innings; the pitch should begin to deteriorate as the match goes on. In theory, the scores should go down in matches as the bowlers come into the game.
The Oval must come into the spotlight too; they’ve had back-to-back run fests where the bowlers just haven’t been able to make an impact. 1,183 runs were made in the most recent game for the loss of only 22 wickets. These types of pitches will do nothing to attract fans. I personally watched days 1 & 3 of this game, and quite frankly, it was a difficult watch.
Once the new ball got to 15 overs old, there was barely any carry, and the pitch was just slow. There wasn’t much turn for the Essex spinners, and it just had draw written all over it.
I know that it’s difficult for groundsmen to produce pitches with pace and bounce in them in April, but when Surrey played Leicestershire, there were even more runs scored in that match, 1,474 for 24 wickets in fact. The pitch did start emerald green in both of these games, looking like it was going to offer something for the bowlers, but ultimately it did not. With Surrey’s game plan revolving around a 5-man seam attack, they need pitches with pace and bounce in them. So the placid pitches they have been playing on haven’t been helping in their quest to challenge for the championship.
It’s been the same issue for the slow bowlers, too. With the pitches around the country showing no signs of breaking up, they haven’t been able to get a foothold in the games either, so they’ve been used as holding bowlers rather than an attacking option as the games wear on.
Only bowlers with extra pace seem to have gotten anything out of these early-season pitches. Sonny Baker took wickets for Hampshire in their thrilling match against Somerset. Josh Tongue took a 5-wicket haul in Notts’ game against Warwickshire, showing his England qualities, and his ability to touch 90mph can trouble batters on the slowest of pitches.
But your average county seamer that operates in the high 70s early 80s can’t get extra bounce from the pitches, and if they do get movement, the batters can change their shot or make an adjustment because they have that extra bit of time to do so.
We’ve seen keepers standing up to the seamers regularly, which I never think is a good sight. This shows there is little pace in a pitch, and the bounce is often low. making it even harder for the seamers. Batting is also difficult in these conditions, with no pace to work with and predominantly ring fields set. Scoring can often crawl along at a painfully slow rate, Dom Sibley’s 6-hour hundred against a disciplined Essex attack at the Oval being a perfect example.
With all this considered, the bat does seem to dominate the ball in early April; there could be a possible option to start the season with the Royal London one day cup and push the championship back until May, hoping that by then the pitches might have some life in them. This probably wouldn’t help the test match players, though, depending on the scheduling of the test matches each summer.
I’m not sure if better drainage has anything to do with the current state of the wickets the counties are currently playing on. Squares are looking unseasonably barren at the moment, and there has been little rainfall over the past weeks, so moisture could be being sucked out of them since the air temperature has been reasonably high recently.
I am not an expert in this subject by any means, the groundsmen across the country do a fantastic job year in year out, and I’m sure they are trying their utmost to produce the best surfaces they can at the moment.
Whatever you do regarding playing cricket in April, it’s a tough decision. A wet March and we’re moaning that the ball is dominating bat, the seamers are running riot and matches are played on green-tops and are over in two days. But until the ECB does something about the scheduling, it seems we will remain at an impasse.
