Thaindian News

Sydney, Mar 18 (ANI): Cricket Australia will investigate reports of widespread doctoring of pitches for Sheffield Shield matches by local sides to get favourable result.

CA’s playing conditions committee, which includes former players Mark Taylor, Matthew Hayden, Greg Chappell, Shane Warne, players union boss Paul Marsh and CA chairman Jack Clarke, would look into the matter.

Tasmanian captain George Bailey’s described the preparation of “result wickets” to the specifications of home sides as a commonplace practice in some states.

The revelation is a troubling reality for CA as it commissions an independent review into factors affecting the Ashes failure of the Australian team.

Australia’s bowlers struggled noticeably to extract life from Test match pitches during the Ashes series, while the batsmen seemed unable to strike the right rhythm for long innings — both drawbacks of the sort of low scoring cricket now prevalent in the Shield.

“Unlike Test cricket, there’s no pressure on groundsmen to produce wickets that are going to last three or four days - there’s no crowds that come and watch,” Bailey said.

“There’s no repercussions if a game lasts two or three days, so I think teams request for a result wicket, and the wickets are playing accordingly, rightly or wrongly,” he said.

“I saw Ricky Ponting say something the other day about when he played, you had to average 60 to break into the Test side. When he broke into the Test side, there were 18-20 draws a year, whereas now there’s only six or seven,” The Sydney Morning Herald quoted him, as saying.

NSW captain Simon Katich and WA skipper Marcus North are two senior figures to have pointed to pitches as a source of problems in domestic cricket, and Bailey agreed. (ANI)