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Home ground advantage in cricket

Australian cricket could come to a halt if a new pay deal isn't sorted. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
Roar Guru
5th March, 2017
5

Earlier this week, we learnt that the ICC were likely to lodge a heavy fine to the Indian cricket board (‘BCCI’), relating to the poor state of the Pune wicket.

There is no doubt that the wicket was doctored to allow for ridiculous amounts of turn from day 1. The fact that they effectively played the Australian spinners into the game was lost on no-one.

However, while the BBCI would seem at long odds to beat this charge, doctored pitches, or at least pitches favouring the home side through local weather conditions, are nothing new. You could argue that this clear home-side advantage is something which is traditional in the game and is one factor as to why it is unique.

Just look at the some of the home ground advantages around the world.

Let’s start with our closest neighbours. New Zealand pitches are the opposite of those produced in India. Your average day 1 pitch in New Zealand has more grass than the average Australian backyard and the great Tony Greig’s “tinge of green” would do them a great dis-service.

The green tops turn Tim Southee and Trent Boult into world beaters. Fortunately, for Australia, our quicks seems to enjoy the conditions as well.

You can add South Africa to the list of green pitch curators and with the likes of Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rababa in their team – and you could hardly blame them. It’s no joy for any Test batsman to face these bowlers on a wicket where bounce, seam and swing mould happily together.

England’s pitches are typically less bouncy than South Africa’s but offer plenty of swing especially and also some seam. The Duke cricket ball plays its part as well. Australia’s recent woes in England have largely been down to the swinging ball. But these conditions are nothing new.

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Terry Alderman was arguably more effective in England than at home, taking 83 of his 170 Test wickets in England at an average of under 20.

The wickets prepared in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan (more recently in the UAE) are all largely the same and the dry weather conditions, other than the annual monsoon in the sub continent, clearly play some part.

On the whole, they are all dry, stay low, offer assistance to their world class spinners and the home team simply is better playing on these decks. We will find that India will move back to these pitches for the remainder of this Test series rather than the Pune lunar surface.

The West Indies are probably the outlier in all of this. The great teams of the 80s and 90s were loaded with world class quicks and their attack remains dominated by pace today. However their wickets are low and slow and seemingly not conducive to pace. Pacemen dominating these wickets is probably testament to how good the likes of Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall and Curtly Ambrose were.

Which brings us finally to Australia. Australia’s pitches tend to offer more bounce than most wickets, which provides Australia with a home advantage. Tours to Australia, with the exception of last year’s South African tour, tend to start at the Gabba where Australian maintains an excellent winning record.

It’s no surprise that this year’s Ashes series will start in Brisbane rather than Perth and the ACB will be hoping Australia go 1-0 up.

The point of this is that all countries prepare pitches to suit their own team. The problem in Pune was that preparing a wicket, that was deteriorating before a ball was bowled, was perhaps a bit too obvious. However, playing under different conditions in different countries is one of the great things about cricket, and lets hope this continues.

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