In the game of cricket, the most important aspect is the 22-yard pitch on which the game is played. It defines the course of the game to a huge extent right from the team selection to toss choice. Home teams generally make the pitch to their advantage considering the quality of bowlers they have and how the weather conditions fare. But not every time does this pitch experiment work out successfully. So today in this article we will speak about six instances where poor pitch conditions led to the cancellation or suspension of the game.
The first instance of worst pitch dates back to 1998 in a test match between West Indies and England in Kingston. It was one of the worst pitches that the game has ever had the misfortune of witnessing. On the morning of the first day, pitch appeared to be incredibly flat, with a few cracks and a decent amount of grass coating at places. The mishaps started happening from the first ball of the day itself as there were several full deliveries which reached out above the wicket keepers shoulder lengths. See the scorecard here :- https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/england-tour-of-west-indies-1997-98-61751/west-indies-vs-england-1st-test-63783/full-scorecard
Whereas many short-pitched deliveries which barely managed to extract bounce from the pitch. Not only did this made the proceedings of the day difficult to manage but also proved to be a threat to the players on both sides as the uneven bounce could prove fatal at times. The situation got so out of control that Alec Steward called his captain Atherton onto the field, who then got into a deep discussion with Lara and the umpires and decided to abandon the match which was rearranged later at a different venue and became one of the rare incidences where a match was abandoned due to poor quality of the pitch.
The second example is the 2008 pitch during the India vs South Africa series. Trailing 1-0 after being bowled out for 76 on a moist pitch in Ahmedabad, India defeated South Africa in three days to level the series. South Africa was bowled out for 121 in the second innings. South Africa coach Mickey Arthur later said in the post-match press conference that the pitch conditions were highly disappointing with variable bounce and too dry with too much spin. The referee looked into the pitch later and found out the allegations to be true and nevertheless, he marked and rated the pitch conditions as poor. Leaving the pitch the accommodations, as well as the pre-match practice sessions, were not up to the mark, and analysts around the globe raised questions on how did the pitch even qualifies as good playing condition in the pre-match pitch analysis. The ground pitch management of Kanpur got away with a warning as they had no history of poor pitches.
Next up is another case of poor pitch conditions from the year 2009 in the series between India and Sri Lanka. Although India had already won the five-match ODI series the last ODI at Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in Delhi was nothing but a dead rubber but to everyone’s surprise, only 23.3 overs were bowled before it was decided the pitch offered “extremely variable bounce and was too dangerous for further play”. The pitch was so I never that it became fatal right from the shoulder to the shin area and the frequency of players getting hurt was increasing every ball. The consequences of this were terrible as Feroz Shah Kotla was banned from hosting international cricket for a year, but that was a reprieve. The blessing in this misery was that had the ICC imposed the maximum penalty of two years, Delhi would have lost out on hosting the 2011 World Cup matches which could have been a big loss to the BCCI.
The fourth instance here dates back to 2011 in the series between Sri Lanka and Australia in Galle. The pitch was acting very weird with excessive spin early on and further deterioration. David Richardson, then the ICC’s general manager for cricket, said: “It was clear from the video footage of the match that the amount of turn, especially early in the match, was excessive and there were occasions (even on the first day) where the ball went through the surface of the pitch, bouncing unusually steeply from a good length.” The results of this were not as strict enough but the ground was officially warned and ICC’s pitch consultant Andy Atkinson was to inspect the pitch before it hosted further international cricket.
The fifth and may be the funniest of all, happened in 2014 between England and India in Nottingham. The first Test of the series brought a glut of runs, including 81 from No. 11 James Anderson and twin fifties for No. 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar. It was widely touted as a “chief executive’s pitch and the lower order batsman enjoyed batting on it a lot while the top order suffered continuously. The pitch was so flat that the only Test at Trent Bridge since then ended in three days with England bowling Australia out for 60 on a green seamer. The pitch was declared as void for carrying out normal proceedings of the game and the pitch management, as well as the ground in charges, were fined and given a warning.
The last instance of poor pitch conditions happened in the series between India and South Africa in Nagpur in 2015. After losing the ODI and T20I series to South Africa, in the words of India director Ravi Shastri, India took a chance and rolled out a turner in the first Test of the series in Mohali. The chance came out to be a huge gamble since the pitch became too unstable with uneven bounce and too invariable spin. South Africa was bowled out for a mere 79 that too on the first day of the match. An official warning was given even though the BCCI questioned the rating. In the World T20 the same season, Nagpur wasn’t allowed to produce a similar type of pitches as BCCI received a lot of flak and since then Nagpur pitch dynamics have been extensively changed and altered.
