T20 World Cup | Drop-in pitches reduce contests to farce

New York: Surely, Ricky Ponting didn’t think much of it when he was asked by the International Cricket Council to talk about the drop-in pitches on their website. 

It was a five-minute video titled: Pitch Perfect: The 10,000-mile journey. It’s the one which, besides highlighting the painstaking efforts of the sponsors' logistical expertise, spoke of how four bespoke pitches were transported from Adelaide to the centre at the Nassau County Cricket stadium in time for the T20 World Cup.

Everyone in the video goes on to wax lyrical without a stammer. Even Ponting, who has seen Australia take to drop-in pitches over the last few years, said it was the way forward. 

Well, on Wednesday, with Ponting in attendance at the venue, the pitch showed us that all things new don’t necessarily point forward.

Sure, the United States didn’t have the time - winter didn’t permit them - to garden a pitch, and there were no guarantees that this venue would remain either. So, the entire New York leg of the World Cup was forced to become modular.

The concept is a good one, and the execution has been on point too, but you don’t get to engineer pitches on one continent and slap it onto another and expect it to go well. 

Pitch No.4 was a nice-looking surface: the colour was right, the cracks looked none too dangerous, and there was a decent spread of grass too. It, however, could well be one of the most dangerous pitches teams have played international cricket on recently.

Granted, the pronounced tilting of the game in favour of the batters of late is not a good look, but this is not either. 

Ireland were bundled out for 96 in 16 overs. Yes, India have some of the best bowlers in the world and they could well have reduced Ireland to that total even on a sporting wicket. But without dismissing the abilities of the marksman, it’s safe to say that that pitch is not worthy of the occasion. 

While overcast conditions did influence the amount of swing available to Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Siraj, Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya, what happened once the ball landed was quite the gamble. 

Some rose from an awkward length to clip the thumbs and elbows of players. Some stayed so low it would dribble to the ’keeper. Some darted in when the ball was intended to go away, and vice versa too.

The Irishmen were guilty of playing some not-so-good cricketing shots, but who can blame them for trying to get out of harm’s way? 

Even Gareth Delany, Ireland’s top scorer on the day with 26, only managed to get those runs by backing away and throwing the kitchen sink at the ball. A nick would go over third man and contact meant some runs anyway. The only thing he knew for certain was that he had to get his body out of the way. 

The Indians looked a bit more compact in the chase, but that didn’t stop skipper Rohit Sharma from getting clipped on the elbow once and his shoulder the next, Rishabh Pant’s elbow received some treatment before his helmet got a couple of pacy ‘goodbyes’ from bouncers, and Virat Kohli got beaten a few times on the swing.

Eventually, India won. Rohit retired hurt with a bruise after his half-century and Pant started to get a bit cheeky, even ending the game with a reverse scoop over the ’keeper. It was a good day as far as the Indians were concerned. 

What of the Irish though?

“It’s tough to adjust when you don’t know what to adjust to,” said Ireland coach Heinrich Malan in the post-match press conference. “This pitch didn’t necessarily live up to the promise of being a good pitch. We were not expecting it to behave the way it did. All we can do now is focus on what lies ahead, but this situation is less than ideal.”

When asked about being allowed into the venue only on the morning of the game, Malan threw his hands up. “We’re trying to be as professional as possible but this is less than ideal. We don’t want it to always be a 200-run game, but it has to be an even contest. Today it was not even,” he said. 

Malan was being about as diplomatic as the circumstances would allow him. After all, ICC runs the show and you don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you. Even Sri Lanka tried to play down their loss to South Africa after being bowled out for 77 a couple of days ago. 

That said, not every team is going to accept surfaces like this when a World Cup is at stake. Moreover, pitches like these defeat the purpose of taking the sport to America. It’s supposed to be fun, engaging, uplifting and promotional. Not dangerous, one-sided, unworthy of the exorbitant ticket prices and abasing the sport.  

Well, let’s see how they rate the pitches they are in charge of.