The MCG pitch for the Boxing Day Test between Australia and England has received an “unsatisfactory” (below average) rating from the ICC match referee Jeff Crowe, Cricket Australia has confirmed. It means that the game’s second-most hallowed venue, after Lord’s, would be handed one demerit point. Six demerit points in a rolling five-year period earn a centre a 12-month ban from hosting international cricket.
“The ICC Match Referee has rated the pitch for the fourth NRMA Insurance Ashes Test at the MCG as ‘unsatisfactory’,” CA said in a press release. It added: “Under the ICC’s four tier pitch rating system, “unsatisfactory” is the third ranking and characterises a pitch that ‘does not allow an even contest between bat and ball…by favouring the bowlers too much, with too many wicket-taking opportunities for either seam or spin’.”
The pitch at the G for the fourth Ashes Test has become the most talked about subject after the game lasted just 852 balls, with England winning it by four wickets. For the first time since 1932, no batsman scored a half-century in a Test on Australian soil. The first Test of the series in Perth was even shorter, lasting only 847 balls. But it was rated as “very good” by match referee Ranjan Madugalle. The consensus was that bad batting rather than a poor pitch was the reason for a short Test. The MCG’s case was different.
Ben Stokes, the England captain, flayed the MCG surface, notwithstanding his team’s victory. He spoke about how his feedback to Crowe “would not be the best”, as he called out the perceived hypocrisy. “I’m pretty sure if that was somewhere else in the world there would be hell on,” Stokes had said.
MCG curator Matt Page left 10mm of grass on the surface and after the game, as he spoke to the press, he expressed his shock. “We are obviously really disappointed that it’s gone for two days. I was in a state of shock after the first day (when 20 wickets fell),” Page told reporters on Sunday, which should have been the third day of one of the most anticipated and cherished events in the Australian sporting calendar. “We have produced a Test that’s been captivating, but it hasn’t gone long enough and we will take ownership of that. We will learn from it, we will grow and we will make sure that we get it right next year,” Page added.
The ICC’s revamped pitch rating system has four categories — Very Good, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory and Unfit.
Meanwhile, Sunil Gavaskar has been at his sarcastic best, as he reacted to yet another two-day Test Down Under. “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 subcontinent (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 Sportstar column.
He added: “Since there is a new match referee, Jeff Crowe, for the Melbourne and Sydney Test matches, the rating could be different.”
The legendary former India captain went on: “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 them. Tut tut,”
A two-day finish in Perth reportedly cost Cricket Australia AUD 5 million. For the MCG ‘farce’, the Australian cricket’s governing body stares at an AUD 10 million loss.
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