What is a 'good' pitch?

“How are the first team getting on?”, “They scored 320-4 off their 50 overs”, “Must have been a good wicket!”. It’s a conversation heard on many a cricket ground during the season. Yet is it really a good wicket? Surely what you actually mean is “that must have a been a good wicket to bat on!”

We all know that cricket is a batsmans game. I regularly have this conversation with my dad, pleading how unfair it is, and he regularly reminds me that people come to watch batsmen and not bowlers. Yet surely what matters as a spectator is the game being close rather than lots of runs being scored on a pitch as flat as a pancake.

Finding the right balance is always the challenge. As a bowler, while it is nice when the pitch offers you a lot of assistance, you also acknowledge that it is not fun watching one team get 70 all out while the other team struggle to chase it. What you really want is a wicket which rewards a bowler when they keep the ball in the right areas consistently enough. You just want it to do ‘a little bit’ so if you bowl well then the batsman is kept under pressure.

Getting this balance is crucial to keeping the equality in the battle between bowler and batsmen. After all, surely winning sports matches is about who has the best team, not just who has the most aggressive batsmen on a flat deck.

At Kimberley, we are renowned for producing ‘good wickets’. It is probably fair to say that generally conditions at Kimberley favour the batsman with the size of the boundaries and the fact the ball comes nicely on to the bat. However, it is very rare that as a bowler you don’t feel that you have something in it for you. As long as you maintain that status quo, it generally makes for good cricket matches.

Just because a wicket is easy to bat on, is it a good wicket?

There is no doubt that over time, cricket has definitely moved in the direction of helping batsmen. Whether it be big steps such as the advent of covered wickets, or the improved condition of bats, to smaller but still significant factors such as the two new white balls in ODI’s removing the bowlers ability to reverse swing the ball, and keeping the ball hard for 50 overs. In addition, umpires will abscond any bowler who slightly incurs on the pitch during follow through, yet a batsman is allowed to disturb the surface as much as he or she likes with their ‘gardening’.

Despite this, it is pleasing to see during the last week two excellent bowling performances for England putting them into this weekends Champions Trophy Final. Yet, many would complain that this was not down to them but actually a poor pitch with seamed and spun a little too much, the weather which helped the ball swing, and the South African bastmen who choked. Or maybe, just maybe, the bowlers bowled well…