“Fast or flat pitches have nothing to do with great bowling!”

Jul 29, 2012 Sports

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Colin E. H. Croft

 

I do not subscribe to that feeling that pitches should help bowlers.  Whatever conditions of strips prepared for games, the simple fact is that to win any cricket game, a team has to take twenty wickets!
What especially international bowlers should now do is grow up, do their jobs, and stop complaining!
There is that strange but true saying – “If you believe in hype, you will produce sh..te”, highlighting a spelling variant of excrement.  England’s bowlers were exactly that against South Africa in Test No. 1!  West Indies bowlers were better, v New Zealand, with Sunil Narine getting his first five-wicket Test haul.

WI’s bowlers, though, especially Narine, were used poorly by captain Darren Sammy, who, at times, seemed lost in the piece of Test 1 v NZ, when NZ batted first.  WI’s batting, admirably led by Chris Gayle and especially first-time centurion Kieran Powell, made up for that failing and was quite good.
How could Sammy delay taking that 2nd new ball in NZ’s 1st innings for so long?  The pitch may not have been conducive to fast bowling, but that is what fast and slow bowlers were there for, to bowl; actually!
“The race is not for the fastest, but for those who will survive the longest!”  In Olympics terms, Tests are like 3000-metres steeplechase, or even marathon; really hard, thoughtful races.  It is not that difficult to be rated No. 1 in Test cricket.  England is finding out, though, that keeping that rating is more difficult!
West Indies, then Australia, has, for the last 40 or so years, from 1972, justifiably ruled Test roost for almost all that period.  England’s reign of only one year is already waning, coming soon after India were there for just two years.  Usain Bold could inform that keeping a crown is much harder than winning it!
England’s Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad are fine fast bowlers; West Indies’ Kemar Roach too; bringing great skill and determination to their game.  At Kia Oval, England’s bowlers were damp squibs.  They looked flat, perhaps allowing themselves that idiotic feeling that “the pitch did not help us!”
Easily the worse comment from England’s camp, after being beaten by an innings, was that of Bowling Coach David Saker.  “I would not say that it was bad bowling!  The pitch was not what we would prefer to bowl on; it was way too flat; and the ball did not move laterally, one of our strengths!”  What?
The opposition makes over 600 runs, losing only 2 wickets, and the bowling manager comes up with that bilge, blaming SA’s batsmen for doing their jobs?  Since when do bowlers have to have help from pitches?  How did England’s only spinner, Graeme Swann, bowled 52 overs, 151 runs, without a wicket?
The Sir Vivian Richards’ pitch was also flat and slow.  Yet, West Indies did a relatively good job there!
Pitches are not supposed to help world-class bowlers, fast or slow.  Simply, they are supposed to deliver success anywhere.  Did anyone notice that South Africa’s bowling attack, to a man, worked well, getting 20 wickets on a pitch that England’s got only two?  England was simply shameful; justifiably destroyed!
Contrastingly, with only two really world-class bowlers in the team, Sunil Narine and Kemar Roach, West Indies still managed to keep New Zealand to a reasonable score, while doing their bowling job well!
As Shaun Pollock suggested, “Being rated No. 1 does not necessarily really mean that you are No. 1!”  England did beat up on lowly rated West Indies in the winter of early summer 2012.  Now that the sun is out, it is England that is wilting.  So far, West Indies have shown team character by not yet wilting too!
South Africa’s fast bowlers Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Vernon Vilander, with tremendous assistance from all-rounder supreme Jacques Kallis, got 16 English wickets on that same supposedly unhelpful pitch for faster bowlers.  Leg-spinner Imran Tahir also augmented that bowling attack admirably!
Cricket has become something like present-day boxing, with varying acknowledgements of superiority.  Gone are the days when one knew who or which team, was actually the best.  It is now too subjective!
The world- heavyweight boxing champion had to beat everyone in the world’s top ten.  When Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali in 1971, Madison Square Garden, Frazier was acknowledged as “king!”
Between 1976 and 1995, West Indies beat every Test team, with a blip of only that contentious series against New Zealand, in 1979/80, a series and result that was soon overturned.
During that period, West Indies, with mostly fast bowlers, won at home and away, on varying pitches.  We were kings anywhere, on bouncy or flat pitches.  Pitches do not matter; you just bowl!
In a perverse way, West Indies tour of Pakistan in 1980/81 was the best series for our fast bowlers.  Nowhere before, probably since, has any fast-bowling attack been so really successful, especially on severely unhelpful pitches!
On dust bowls that were pitches back then, especially at Karachi, Multan and Faisalabad, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Colin Croft, Joel Garner and Sylvester Clarke won that series for West Indies, despite Pakistan’s tremendously talented batsmen, with noted world-class all-rounder Imran Khan batting at No. 7.  “Immy” even got Pakistan’s lone century of that series; Sir Viv also, for West Indies.
There have been so many comparisons of mainly fast bowling rated attacks.  Seeing Gary Sobers, Wesley Hall and Charlie Griffith, along with Australians Neil Hawke and Graeme McKenzie, in 1965, was my start of a love affair of the art; a real special treat.  All bowled superbly fast!
Dennis Lillee, Jeffrey Thompson, Gary Gilmour and Max Walker provided the Australians with a bowling attack that allowed them to beat the world, anywhere, for most of 1970’s, until re-emergence of West Indian fast bowlers.  The variance in Australia’s fast attack was the key; pace, bounce and movements!
That preceded that plethora of fast bowlers that the world drooled for; Holding, Andy Roberts, Wayne Daniel, Croft, Garner, Marshall and Clarke; all capable of destroying batting teams any day.
That Clive Lloyd, then Viv Richards, had that range and varying styles at their disposal was simply synchronicity; attitudes, abilities, policies, attributes and politics coming together at the right time!
Jason Gillespie, Craig Mc Dermott, Glen Mc Grath, Merv Hughes and Brett Lee later provided great fast bowling input for Australia, plus that incomparable spinner, Shane Warne.  What an attack that was!
Pakistan’s Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, along with Imran Khan, gave fast bowling excitement that had had not seen for many a year anywhere, left-handed Wasim being the best fast bowler I have ever seen.  No-one, in my lifetime, has made balls ‘wobble, move, swing and talk” like he did!
Courtney Walsh, Curtley Ambrose, Ian Bishop, and two Benjamins, Kenny and Winston, also provided West Indies with continuing ascendency.  Once they were gone, though, so was West Indies’ strength!
England has two additional fast bowers that they could consider, fitness being fine, for remaining Tests against South Africa; Steve Finn and Graeme Onions.  Whatever the pitches, SA’s faster bowlers looked tops.  West Indies’ Tino Best might even get his chance later too, even on these pitches!  Enjoy!

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