The pitch for next week’s Ashes test has been described as soft with an elastic consistency due to the presence of extended pre-match bad weather. Or in other words, ‘Jelly.’
Steve Rouse, the groundsman, poured forth his worries in a bout of pessimism that, if well-founded means the surface will be slow and low, lacking in bounce and pace.
Interestingly, this really gives one a sense of deja vu.
Back in 2005 the same pitch was said by Rouse to have experienced a ‘tornado’ in the week before the match. Having lived in Birmingham for some time in the early part of this century, I was mildly surprised by that announcement at the time.
Birmingham weather could be described as dreary, wet and depressingly cold. But a tornado? Very unusual!
That pronouncement in 2005 may have influenced Ponting to send in the opposition, despite winning the toss. The ground appeared to weather the ‘tornado’ rather well, with scores of 407, 308, 182 and 279.
So what should Ponting do should he win the toss?
It would be convenient if had some sort of reliable and scientific method for assessing the pitch to fall back on. That is, finding out just how much jelly is in that pitch.
Currently, instruments exist for measuring bounce and moisture in a surface. I’m not sure if a device exists for measuring turn.
But given how clever Aussies are at inventing stuff, I am sure someone can come up with something.
The really clever idea might be to take measurements of the pitch before an innings, then correlate that data with scores from the pitch. Ideally, you might be able to get some sort of predictive power from a statistical analysis of the data.
That would be Jelly science, indeed.
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