| Cricinfo Home | | | | | | | Audio | Video | | |||
|
||||
| ||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
| |||||
SUNDAY 26 November 2000 The nature of the playing surface at the Bellerive Oval has, during the past five years or so, helped it to become one of the most unique wicket squares in world cricket. When it was first established as the headquarters of Tasmanian cricket in the early 1990s, I can recall many games where batting was very difficult and team scores in excess of 300 were match winners. Many 'natural' outright results occurred - by natural results I mean those in which forty wickets fall for the match - and there were many periods where ball truly dominated bat. However, as the decade has evolved, so the pitch has become better and better to bat on. The ideal first-class wicket will start with seam movement for the first day or so, be at its best for batting on days two and three, and start to develop variable bounce and spin for the final day. These are the characteristics that have seen Adelaide Oval and curator Les Burdett rated as two of the best in the world at what they consistently provide.
The nature of the pitch was never better highlighted than by Australia's win over Pakistan in last year's Test series. Justin Langer and Adam Gilchrist made a mockery of the target, batting wonderfully on a five day old pitch still playing perfectly. Inspecting the pitch the next day it looked as though you could have played another five days on it! Curator Peter Apps associates these characteristics with the nature of the clay, which I am told comes from Relbia on Tassie's north-west coast. This when combined with our weather, which rarely sees four days of uninterrupted baking sunshine, does not allow for normal pitch vagaries to creep in during the match. I am sure it must sound strange to hear an opening batsman complain of his home wicket being too flat but as captain it has been frustrating to have a side dominating games but not able to force results - a criticism that our bowling attack has unfairly had to cop over the years. I can vividly remember playing in my first game at the MCG and Dean Jones coming off after making 190-odd and being quoted in the press the next day as saying something like "I don't want to score 100 every time I bat, I want results"!
My immediate reaction to this was two-fold:
Deano, I owe you an overdue apology as I now know what you meant! Well the inevitable has finally happened and the Aussies have triumphed comprehensively in the first Test at the Gabba. The result would have surprised nobody but personally I have been quite amazed at the levels of sympathy the West Indians seem to be receiving from the Australian public and most especially in my household! Whilst I appreciate that ever since 1961 they have historically been the most popular touring cricket side here in Australia and that Aussies generally do love an underdog, it would also seem that many of us have short memories. Quite frankly, as a kid I grew up hating the West Indies because we could never beat them. Whilst secretly I also greatly admired them, I would never have been caught admitting this amongst my schoolmates and I was even guilty of occasionally throwing my wicket away and bowling 'generously' when forced to play in playground West Indian teams. They were the enemy but I always remained faithful to the view that vengeance would come. I have been fortunate to have played with and/or against the majority of this current West Indian unit and have found them to be a terrific bunch but, for one, I am looking forward to a summer of Aussie dominance. Roll on 5-0!!
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||
|
