The MCG Test was the second game in the ongoing Ashes series, which was completed in two days. The first one was in Perth. Both the surfaces have had excessive movement for seam bowlers, and batters have had a difficult time surviving on those wickets. However, the pitch at Perth was rated “Very good” by the match referee. After the Boxing Day Test ended, former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar sarcastically remarked that this pitch, too, might be rated “good.”
“Another Test match in Australia has finished in less than two days of cricket. The Australian Cricket Board’s CEO says it is not good business, and most, if not all, cricket fans in the sub-continent (read India) are screaming blue murder about the quality of the pitch given in Melbourne. They were astonished when the first Test match pitch in Perth was given a very good rating by the match referee Ranjan Madugalle,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Sportstar.
“Since there is a new match referee, Jeff Crowe, for the Melbourne and Sydney Test matches, the rating could be different. Since 36 wickets fell in the Melbourne Test instead of 32 in Perth, Crowe might drop the word ‘very’ from the ‘very good’that Madugalle gave for the Perth pitch and rate the MCG pitch as good. Surprises never cease, of course, so we may get another rating,” he added.
“The curators, or as we found out about the person in charge at the MCG, the Director of Turf, may make a human error and get it slightly wrong, but they are not as devious as those ‘horrible groundsmen’ in India who do not even prepare a pitch and expect the batters to score runs on it. Tut tut,” Gavaskar further wrote.
Gavaskar also slammed the double standards of the match referees, saying that if the batters manage to score more runs, pitches are rated poor, and if the bowlers pick wickets, they are good. “The irony is that if it is a pitch where not too many wickets fall but plenty of runs are scored, then the match referee more often than not gives it a poor rating. So, batters scoring loads of runs is a no-no, but bowlers picking heaps of wickets is okay, and the pitch has to be rated good or very good. Clearly, it is no longer a batter’s game but the bowlers’,” Gavaskar concluded.
