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Opinion
Whenever a Test match ends in three days – never mind two – critics decry the pitch as being too bowler-friendly.
The bounce was too hefty, they say; it seamed too much; it was turning square from ball one. And the most common complaint of all: there wasn’t a fair contest between bat and ball.
Everyone from the Gabba curator David Sandurski himself, to South African captain Dean Elgar, to commentators and former greats of the game such as Mark Waugh and Ricky Ponting, have slammed the pitch for the first Test between Australia and South Africa.
Yes, the strip in Brisbane wasn’t perfect. But compared to the absolute snooze-fest of a series just completed against the West Indies, where the Aussies racked up gargantuan totals on pitches that ranged from challenging but manageable (Adelaide) to woefully lifeless (Perth), seeing ball dominate bat made for utterly compelling viewing.
Those two days in Queensland were ten times more watchable than either of the previous Tests. I can’t express how much I would prefer to watch two days of action-packed cricket than slog through five mundane ones.
I only wish the Perth and Adelaide curators had found a way to give their pitches as much life as was on display at the Gabba. Had they done so, we might have at least seen the Windies bowlers challenge the Aussie batters.
Might the pitch have deteriorated further on day three and become genuinely unsafe? Perhaps. But it’s probably worth noting that, while plenty of balls seamed, bounced and fizzed around across those two remarkable days, not many of the wickets came about from genuinely unplayable balls.
Take Steve Smith, who claimed it was one of the most challenging pitches he’d ever played on 20 minutes after getting out nicking a supremely ugly cut shot that he should have shouldered arms to.
This isn’t to say that the pitch was perfect – but then again, few are. And nowhere in the criticism has there been room to consider that, just maybe, two outstanding bowling sides came up against one seriously weak top order and another proven to be deceptively frail in tricky conditions, and cashed in.
The 29,306 fans that packed the ground for day one – the most at the venue for a non-Ashes Test, incidentally – got their money’s worth and more.
Mitchell Starc celebrates taking the wicket of Temba Bavuma (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Sure, the broadcasters won’t be happy – they pay for five days of Test cricket – but such is the risk of buying the rights to just about the only sport in the world without a set ending time.
On the flip side, the result of such a dramatic Test is that, for the first time all summer (and that includes the T20 World Cup) cricket is actually dominating discussion around the nation’s water-coolers. That can only lead more viewers to tune in for the rest of the summer.
That goes for the Big Bash League, too – the sheer comedy value of the Sydney Thunder getting bowled out for 15 has put the league in the spotlight for the first time in what feels like years.
People love drama, they love records and they love the occasional bout of glorious incompetence in professional sport, and across three truly chaotic days of cricket over the weekend, we got that in droves.
The spicy pitch in Brisbane gave a stale summer just the adrenaline shot it needed, and suddenly the Boxing Day Test looms as an enthralling, unmissable contest once more. Had the Gabba given us a plodding, batter-friendly deck and seen Australia rack up another zillion runs, how many brave souls would have still been paying attention come day five?
It’s probably good for the Australian team, too, to be tested out in challenging conditions against world-class bowlers sooner rather than later. Next year sees them tour India and England, with the World Test Championship final in between, in which they are all but certain to take part.
It’s no use rolling five flat tracks this summer on which the top six can Adam Voges their way to monstrous scores, only to have no clue how to cope when batting gets truly tough in a few months’ time.
If there’s anything to take out of the Gabba, it’s not that the pitch was unfit for cricket; it’s that Travis Head can still produce a blitzkrieg even on a green seamer. That’s exciting news ahead of an English summer where he’ll not only be faced with just those conditions, but an England batting line-up that plays in the same way.
Above all, though, Brisbane reminded us that Test cricket remains so compelling because it’s the only format that still promises some sort of contest between bat and ball. You just don’t get conditions like those faced by the Aussies and Proteas in limited-overs cricket, where the size of the sixes is what counts and bowlers might as well be throwing machines with pulses.
It doesn’t need to be every pitch all of the time – part of the beauty of Tests is each surface, each country, each city offers different challenges that only the best can master. But a Gabba deck – every so often – to keep the batters on their toes and give the bowlers something to strive for is good for the future of the sport.
Forget criticising the pitch – we should instead be celebrating it for producing some of the best cricket seen in Australia in years. It wasn’t on for a long time, but the first Test was unquestionably a good time.
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