‘If in doubt, favour the batter’ – Cricket Australia looks to redress pitch balance

This has led many former players to point towards a batting crisis in Australia. Batting techniques and temperaments have been questioned more than some of the surfaces. There has also been a change in the Kookaburra ball itself, since 2019, when a second layer of lacquer and some reinforcement to the seam made the ball behave differently to the previous version.

The current style of batting in red-ball cricket, influenced by the development of the shorter forms, is also being blamed, as well as the advent of the World Test Championship, which has incentivised pitches that guarantee results.

Roach said that CA and curators are aware of these issues, and looking at changing the ecosystem’s approach to pitch preparation to try and redress the balance between bat and ball.

“Our previous language, probably for the best part of a decade, has been that we do want to see a balance between bat and ball,” Roach told Cricinfo. “Our curators share that… I think our teams do as well. But over the last decade, there’s probably been a ‘when in doubt, lean towards the bowler’.

“If you think about 10 years ago, when batters were having their way and things were a bit flat, that made some sense. We still want to see results in our games. We don’t want long, laborious draws. That’s not good for cricket. We want to see results late in games. That’s ideal.

“But the language that we [now want] to get across to our curators is that ‘if in doubt, favour the batter.’

“And what does that mean in practice? It means that of the many decisions that the curators have made leading into the game… ‘Do I need to thin the grass out a bit more? Do I need to take another millimetre off? Do I need to give an extra roll?’ – it’s not starting with, ‘I want to advantage the batter.’

“[Redressing the balance between bat and ball is] actually in all those little decisions, trying to create the perfect balance. And our curators speak openly about this. They have hundreds of decisions to make in their preparation, depending on weather in lead in, other games and so forth.

“Our language is we still want the balance, but if in doubt lean towards the batter. That’s in response to the way the game’s being played.”

“Wickets have got greener, so it’s kind of like the perfect storm coming together,” he said. “But the ball’s definitely staying harder, so I think the last three years have probably been the hardest that I’ve experienced in my career batting-wise, in terms of the amount of movement that’s being generated.

“If you look back five years ago, you’re seeing consistent 400-500s being scored in the first innings. If you put a three in front of [the score] these days, you’re usually in a pretty strong position.”

Roach agreed that different elements in the modern red-ball game have led to a downturn in Australia’s batting output. “It’s been a combination of things, and our curators, as always, will need to adjust, as they always have, to try and get the best balance in each game of cricket they have,” he said.

While CA is not mandating pitch instructions, they have made a minor change to session timings for the upcoming Shield season in response to a submission that the final session is too long.

Earlier, session timings in the Shield matched that of Test cricket, with each session lasting two hours with an additional 30 minutes for the final session. Like Test cricket, slow over-rates mean the final session is almost always extended to two-and-a-half hours with two drinks breaks.

CA has decided to add 15 minutes to the middle session, which means both the second and third sessions will be two hours and 15 minutes if the extra hour is required. There has already been feedback from one Shield captain suggesting this change in timings could force more spin to be bowled in the middle session, with the overs of spin having declined in the competition. This change will also remove one drinks break in the final session.

“This was in response to a submission,” Roach said. “It wasn’t a proactive [decision, to go] ‘Let’s do this to get a massively different outcome’. It was ‘Okay, well, there might be an opportunity here to look at things a different way and get a marginal gain in terms of it being a bit easier to bat at a certain time in day, and maybe a few more opportunities for the spinners’.”