Why green tops should be criticized just as much as dust bowls for 'harming the quality of cricket'

Good-pitch-bad-pitch debate?

Hypocrisy (Noun) - the practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.

Now that we have got that definition out of our way, let us focus on a burning topic in the world of cricket – the turners prepared for the India-South Africa series. All over the world there has been a furore about the ‘quality’ of the pitches, with several eminent personalities proclaiming that such turners are not good for the ‘future of cricket’.

Sunil Gavaskar rightly pointed out that ‘the broadcasters wouldn’t be happy’ with pitches that lead to matches ending in three days. But Indian players have a constant defence during press conferences these days – ‘Why is it okay to have green tops and not rank turners?’.

Michael Clarke tweeted that the perfect pitch should have something in it for everyone – swing and seam on the first couple of days, then slowly, the pitch should aid batting, and then there should be spin on days 3, 4 and 5.

Now it would have been nice if Clarke had also pointed out any pitch which offered India some turn from Day 3 onwards when they toured Australia last year. He wouldn’t be able to, because Indians didn’t get it.

I think cricket is still under the influence of colonialism which, coupled with the nature of Indians to self-criticize, has led to this needless controversy.

We are the first to criticize our team when they lose on green tops abroad. We are the first to criticize them when they cannot handle swing and seam and pace, notwithstanding the fact that Indian players rarely get a chance to test their skills on such pitches. But we are also the first to criticize our team and our pitches when we are winning on turning tracks.

It is a game of two teams, not one

Statistically, the India-South Africa series has produced some low scores. But one look at the lowest cumulative team totals in the last three years shows that low scores are not the exception these days, but a norm, largely because the technique of batting has changed.

Grafters like Rahul Dravid and Jacques Kallis wouldn’t have made Nagpur look like a minefield. The present generation of players do not have the patience or the will to survive in tough conditions. VVS Laxman has survived on tougher pitches than this and yet, people unabashedly write about how the Kolkata Test had a good batting track and that is the kind of track we should lay out instead of turners.

Maybe, with those teams, this match would have looked like a Kolkata match? At the end of the day, the track is the same for both teams. Had India won the toss in the final ODI, it could have been the home team thumping 400 and winning the decider.

India were arguably the better team in the ODIs and yet, they ended up on the losing side because of a toss that went against them in the decider. But very few came in support of Indian players then.

The moral of the story is that as long as both teams are playing on the same track, the question of fair and unfair shouldn’t arise. There is a reason why away wins are precious along with away performances. It is because balanced pitches are not offered on a platter.

Instead, pitches that suit the home strengths are offered, which means that you are fighting against the opponent whose strength has been doubled. Now to the question of the future of Test cricket.

Green tops vs turners

Watching a fast bowler beat the bat on either side is beautiful, whether that is Dale Steyn’s outswing or Morne Morkel’s lifter, Mitchell Starc’s in-swing or James Anderson’s reverse. Such fast bowlers become even more menacing when the pitch assists them with movement off the deck.

Ask Australia, who lasted all of 18.3 overs against England in the Ashes this year when Broad ran rampant and Anderson wasn’t even playing. But the pertinent question here is – is one demon better than the other?

True, India shouldn’t have a turner that breaks on Day 1 and becomes unplayable. It is not right on an absolute level. But very few pay attention to history, the history that Indians are almost verbally intimidated with captains saying, ‘We will provide tracks that have pace, bounce and movement.’

Would it be wrong then for Indians to come out in defence of their home tracks, asking what they did wrong now? Did those captains not openly use their home advantage? Would India have prepared such rank turners if South Africa had two quality spinners like England did when they won in India with Swann and Panesar?

South Africa were disappointing even against Bangladesh in whatever few glimpses we got of them. Isn’t this the team that has not lost a single series away in nine years? What is wrong in testing such a team on minefields? Some would say doing so was actually our duty towards Test cricket itself.

If green tops test a batsman's technique, so does a dust bowl. A batsman is supposed to deal with pace and spin equally well – that's what separates the great batsmen from the journeymen. But somehow, we have lost sight of that simple dictum, and we are ready to believe that pace is 'real’ cricket while spin is merely a lesser mortal's devious trickery.

Two wrongs don’t make a right but at the same time, ignoring one wrong and creating a farcical hue and cry over the other is what is making cricket a controversial, almost comical and silly-looking game.

Everyone has an opinion and everyone has enough prejudiced stats to throw at each other. But at the end of the day, cricket is a game where one team needs to score more than the other, at least a run, to be called victors.

A noted cricket website justified Nottingham’s track and Broad’s spell vis-à-vis Nagpur thus – ‘A pitch offering seam movement and another offering sharp turn are equally good surfaces, provided the pace and bounce are consistent. But there is a difference between the kind of assistance England's seamers enjoyed at Nottingham and the kind of help India's spinners got in Nagpur.’

My question to that is simple – Have you watched enough cricket to know that sharp turn and consistent pace and bounce at the same time are virtually impossible? Unless AB de Villiers turns curator, that is!

The big question of the game’s future

Wasim Akram probably provided one of the best suggestions so far – a solution instead of cribbing about a problem – when he said the ICC should take over the preparation of pitches everywhere. In that case, it could be ensured that some level of uniformity can be arrived at.

We wouldn’t have Tests like we did at Mohali, Nagpur or in Perth. Interestingly, it takes a genius to create a pitch that will ensure a match will go on until the final session of the final day and yet yield a result. A pat on the back should be given to curators who can at least ensure a pitch that produces a match that lasts till the 5th day’s first session.

Now if you want to err, which side would you lean towards – the side that gives you a result or the side that gives you a Perth Test? The answer is clear. 

When India played in New Zealand months before the 2003 World Cup, the pitches would move square from fast bowlers; no exaggeration. Back then, no one criticized the pitches, but the quality of Indian batting was lambasted. That is because, at the core, we are a blaming species, and reason is seldom heard loudly.

For Test cricket to flourish, matches should produce action and results. At the same time, matches must make money for broadcasters and last long enough. Also, matches should be played on pitches that don’t give an unfair advantage to bowlers or batsmen.

A good Test wicket is one where a bowler should be able to take a five-wicket haul and a batsman should be able to score a century if they apply themselves. The present tracks fall short of the century-parameter, which means that they are leaning too much towards bowlers.

Green tops do absolutely the same, especially those which make the toss extremely important and allow teams to be bundled out in two sessions. As long as two boards do not prepare pitches on mutual understanding, we would always have arguments and counter-arguments.

But to say that green tops are in some way more 'sporting’ than dust bowls is a farcical argument – and perhaps a sharp indicator that we haven't yet shed the vestiges of colonialism.