Sri Lanka V Australia 1st Test: Give Me Some More Galle!

Being in the profession of covering cricket allows one to watch every cricket match, whether or not it is the home team playing and today was one of those fortunate days when I was able to live my dream of following the Sri Lanka-Australia encounter at Galle. Why dream? Simply because of the nature of the pitch, which turned and spat from very early on in the game, something that has, in this day and age become so conspicuous by its absence.

It is an oft-repeated, but a sad tale that tracks which assist the medium-pacers through most part of the Test match are deemed to be the ‘good’ cricket wickets, but those that afford something for the spinners very early that are derogatorily termed dustbowls.

This is why, the Galle Test makes my heart skip a beat, and makes me flush with excitement as I watch the wickets fall. The batsmen, on the deliveries they do not get out, need to get all their skills to the fore – stout defence, unflappable concentration and the ability to score when the red cherry does command the willow to slap it away. And there are still those balls that make the batsmen hop like a reluctant kid in a potato race, which make for some excellent viewing.

Michael Hussey’s knock on the first day and Michael Clarke’s innings on the second day of the Galle game epitomised the above virtues to their core, even as the home team, Sri Lanka, who had had the pitch prepared to suit their convenience, failed in their endeavour rather miserably.

The problem with creating such tracks is two-fold; one, the non sub-continental oppositions have almost invariably made it a habit of deeming such tracks to be poor ones, and two, the broadcaster is left unhappy as the game does not last the distance, reducing their chances of earning the revenue.

The first issue, to me, is a non-starter. As long as there is no standardisation of pitches across the world (like a football field or a hockey pitch), there is no point in allowing quicker, bouncier pitches to be allowed a free rein and a spinning track being unpermitted. There cannot or at least, should not be separate laws for different types of bowling.

The second issue is worth looking into. Five days of cricket, as opposed to three or four – in which a game could end if the track is difficult to bat on – will lead to reduction in revenues for the broadcaster. However, in the long run, he needs to realise that an exciting match which pinches the oohs and aahs out of the audiences as regularly as the Galle game has done on account of the nature of the pitch, will get the audiences back to the game, unlike a five-day game that ends in a dull drab.

The ideal pitch, as has often been drilled into us fans, is often the one that assists the quicker bowlers on the first day and a half, the batsmen on the days two, three and part of four and starts to turn on the fourth and the fifth day. In theory, that reads fine. But in practice, how many pitches are being made that way? Rarely, if at all, and that could probably be because it is not easy to get an ideal pitch.

Again, this theory was good for those days when reverse swing was art unknown, or its knowledge was almost island-like – today, it isn’t too difficult to get the ball to reverse swing on such abrasive, Galle-like surfaces. So, it isn’t as if the pitch wouldn’t have anything for pace bowlers – they just need to learn the art of reverse-swing bowling.

Time for the ICC and all those concerned stakeholders to go back to the drawing board and decide what is good for Test cricket in terms of the pitch. Because dare I say, if Australia would have had to bat second in the ongoing Test match and lost it because of the dryness of the pitch, even the blind and deaf of the Arctic circle would have known that the surface at Galle was ‘unsuitable for Test cricket’!