With all the fuss Mickey Arthur and Michael Clarke have created over the Test team, I thought it would be good to get back to ground zero and look at the Sheffield Shield.
Remember it? Maybe not, since there’s no coverage of it and it’s certainly not on the nightly news anymore.
This weekend the six states are fighting it out for places in the final and each team has a mathematical chance of not only making the final, but hosting it.
A very close competition indeed.
But if we look at the stats behind the teams, what is revealed?
Our batsmen are weak, our bowlers are strong? No – it reveals we are making result pitches.
The cynic in me says this is because three people attending the SCG (or insert whatever ground) to watch a game over four days do not make as much money as three people watching the game over three days.
So the states are asking the caretakers to make wickets that produce results.
The cricket lover in me says it is because we want to prepare our future players for England conditions.
But we forgot India – and the rest of the world.
Imagine if during the drought a few years ago we had let our grounds turn to dustbowls. We would have a generation of cricketers used to facing slow (I’m not sure our bowlers would have learnt to spin it) bowlers, and not the fast men.
Back to the Shield, however, I have fond memories of listening to it on the radio. I remember Craig ‘Billy the Kid’ McDermott breaking Tasmania’s batsmen in his debut year for Queensland (well it’s how I remember it).
Nowadays I struggle to recognise the Australian team because of the lack of Shield coverage. I used to read the grade cricket articles in the courier mail, now there are none.
And this in a day and age when we have pay TV!
To all Shield teams (particularly Queensland), I wish you all the best.
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