WRITERS’
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After the first one-day international (ODI) between West Indies and England on Wednesday, a good friend of mine told
Kensington Oval
curator Winston Reid he wanted to see more juice in the pitch for Friday’s second match.
I quickly said: “No, no, no, no”. My friend’s call was made against the background that bowlers found the going tough in the face of sustained hitting on both sides in a match where England successfully chased down a target of 361. My counter was to emphasise that limited-overs matches are supposed to be for batsmen to dominate, ultimately leading to entertaining cricket with spectators getting their monies’ worth. And no one could argue that they weren’t entertained on Wednesday with a plethora of sixes and fours, with both teams scoring at more than seven runs an over. As far as I was concerned, it was the ideal pitch for an ODI, one on which batsmen were at home.
If the pitch, however, has something in it for bowlers, it opens up the possibility of reducing the entertainment value. Chances are that you could have low-scoring contests with batsmen struggling. Limited-overs games are not the ones where you want to see batsmen bobbing, weaving, flinching and fending.
Even without doing anything much to the pitch, it will have some preparation moisture at the start that will keep batsmen in check. Such was the case on Wednesday when Chris Gayle spent the first ten overs playing responsibly while assessing the strip before asserting himself.
Reid and his team can take a bow for producing pitches that led to batsmen enjoying themselves and spectators cheering on the boundaries. Let’s hope we will see similar surfaces for the rest of the series.
HAYDN
