Australia won this series in spite of some of the flattest pitches seen down under for years. It is three decades since Melbourne and Sydney both ended in stalemate
Daniel Brettig at the SCG10-Jan-20153:46
Agarkar and Bevan’s combined XI
Last time the Melbourne and Sydney Tests both finished in draws, it was 1986. Sunil Gavaskar and Allan Border were opposing each other on the field rather than presenting their trophy to the victorious captain. Steve Waugh, Merv Hughes and Geoff Marsh were uncertain debutants, Ravi Shastri a wiry twenty-something allrounder.India were an emerging power in the game, having won the 1983 World Cup and the 1985 World Championship of Cricket. But they were still considered a poor relation by the likes of England and Australia, and it had not been long since they were required to pay for the reciprocal right to tour other nations.Test cricket was a sedate affair – draws were frequent, and scoring rates commonly hovered around 2.5 an over. In Adelaide, the first Test of that series, Australia pottered around for 149 overs to make 381, and India responded with 520 across 202 overs. As Wisden put it: “Adverse weather, which cost 300 minutes’ play during the last three days, was only one of the factors leading to the draw.”For all that, Melbourne would have been an Indian victory without rain washing out the final session when the visitors stood poised at 2 for 59 in pursuit of 126. Sydney was also in the lap of Kapil Dev’s team, and had they batted with a little more purpose early on the second day there would surely have been enough time to round up a nervy Australian team when they followed on later.What this illustrates is how rare it has been for the Boxing Day and New Year’s Tests to both end in stalemates, and how much Test cricket has moved on in pace and proactivity to lessen the possibility of such non-results. What the observer of history and trend is left to conclude is that the pitches for Melbourne and Sydney – and to a lesser extent Adelaide and Brisbane – have left too much to the batsmen’s imagination.As they are apt to do, Australia’s pace bowlers were first to suggest that the surfaces for this series have been a little too friendly to those who wield the willow. Mitchell Johnson reckoned that while Adelaide is expected to be a difficult week for fast bowlers, Brisbane had lost pace and bounce relative to the rapid strip prepared for England, and Melbourne’s drop-in was neither lively enough at the start nor cracked enough at the finish.Johnson’s pace dropped away significantly during the series, as he was pushed into longer spells by Steven Smith and Darren Lehmann on unresponsive pitches. Ryan Harris and Josh Hazlewood had their moments, but the former offered similar critiques of the pitches, and the major share of the work was left to Nathan Lyon. His response was admirable – 23 wickets was a career-best in a single series, the first time an Australian spinner had led the series aggregates in a home bout since Nathan Hauritz against Pakistan in 2009-10.But the struggles of the faster men against opponents who have a reputation of being uncomfortable on pitches affording bounce or movement told a story that went beyond the relative merits of the two teams. Australia’s curators for 2014-15 have been a timid lot, preparing surfaces that they hoped would produce a result on the last day, but not providing enough assistance at either end to make it certain.The administrators, too, have played a part, by excising Perth from the rota of Test match grounds for the first time since 1973. The WACA Ground’s facilities are a matter of some debate, and there has been much conjecture about the future of the ground given the widespread move towards homogenised all-sport stadia with drop-in pitches, as will be built at Burswood in 2018. India would not mind never playing a Test at the WACA Ground again, but Australia’s fast bowlers – and more than a few batsmen – would weep at the same thought.Where is the variable bounce? Where is the seam movement? What do bowlers turn to?•Cricket AustraliaThe bowlers were driven almost to tears on day five in Sydney, as the uncertain bounce they hoped for did not materialise. Only Lyon managed to get the sort of variation desired, one ball in each of first and second innings sliding fast along the floor to defeat Rohit Sharma then R Ashwin. Mitchell Starc gained a tad of new-ball swing and rather more reverse in arguably his best Test match display. But when he and Ryan Harris took the second new ball they found remarkably little movement off the surface.Steven Smith and Virat Kohli, the two opposing captains in this series, have also been masters of every bowler they surveyed. Four hundreds and near enough to 700 runs each, they have batted to a wondrously high standard. But they have had to, in the knowledge that a first innings short of 500 would be decidedly pregnable, and a fourth innings chase was always conceivable no matter how distant the target.”It has been tough to get 20 wickets in this Test series,” Smith said. “The wickets haven’t broken up quite as we thought they might have, I don’t know the reasons for that. But it’s been tough and the bowlers have toiled extremely hard throughout these four Test matches, and I’m really proud of how they’ve gone throughout these games.”I thought 90 overs with them having a little dip at us with the bat, we would be a good chance to win this game but it wasn’t to be. I think the wicket didn’t break up quite as much as I thought it would, there wasn’t much up and down movement with balls on the stumps, I think with Nathan into the rough there were a few that hit the gloves and went straight into the ground, on a different day those pop up and you get wickets.”Kohli cast his mind back to 2011-12. While he reasoned that the MCG’s drop-in barely changed and Adelaide retained its character, he reckoned that Sydney had slowed considerably, while the replacement of the WACA with the Gabba reaped the most equitable pitch of the series.”Melbourne I think was pretty similar last time, I don’t think we played that well the last time around,” Kohli said. “Adelaide again was similar. I think Brisbane was probably was the most true wicket this series. It had a bit for both bowlers and batsmen. This wicket was surprisingly slow. Sydney the last time around was much quicker as far as I remember.”That Indian team had been unhappy with the wickets served up, most notably those in Sydney and Perth. This time they have managed to halve the margin from 4-0 to 2-0, helped in no small part by the pitches prepared. If the cricket of 2014-15 was not quite as slow burning as that of 1985-86, then the gap was uncomfortably close.
