Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of Queen’s Park Crick­et Club (QPCC) Col­in Mur­ray has hit back at claims made by for­mer West In­dies fast bowl­ing leg­end Andy Roberts that the bowlers on show in the Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) were made to look 10 times bet­ter than they are be­cause of the state of the pitch­es.

Roberts speak­ing on the Jo­jo Ra­dio pro­gramme in An­tigua said: “I know we blame COVID for every­thing but this is not one of the things we should try to blame on COVID, we are mak­ing bowlers look 10 times as good as they are and es­pe­cial­ly in the spin de­part­ment.

“You knew about three or four months ago that you’re go­ing to have this tour­na­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go, one coun­try, but you have two dif­fer­ent fa­cil­i­ties that you are go­ing to play at so arrange­ments should be made to get all the pitch­es up to a cer­tain stan­dard. When I say all, I mean the en­tire square, be­cause you can’t just use two pitch­es for the num­ber of match­es you are go­ing to be play­ing on them.”

The high­ly re­spect­ed crick­et com­men­ta­tor Mur­ray told Guart­di­an Me­dia Sports on Mon­day that: “We on­ly knew that the tour­na­ment was go­ing to take place for sure in Trinidad and To­ba­go one month in ad­vance. This is when we got the of­fi­cial word from the gov­ern­ment. We were prepar­ing as if it was go­ing to be played here any­way. How­ev­er, there was a lot of rain about and when this hap­pens you have slow pitch­es. Yes, I agree that one or two pitch­es turned more than nor­mal but the rain had a great im­pact on the na­ture of the pitch­es that were pro­duced. There may have been a slight er­ror of judge­ment on the part of those who pre­pare the pitch­es but what Sir Andy should be say­ing that is the bat­ting was poor. Is he try­ing to say that spin­ners like Mu­jeeb Ur Rah­man (16 wick­ets), the sec­ond most in the tour­na­ment, Sandeep Lamach­hane, Im­ran Tahir (15 wick­ets), Sunil Nar­ine, Fawad Ahmed (13 wick­ets), Kesrick Williams (13 wick­ets) and Rashid Khan are not world-class bowlers?

The top bowler of the 2020 edi­tion was New Zealand's Scott Kuggelei­jn, 28, of the St Lu­cia Zouks, the los­ing fi­nal­ist who cap­tured 17 wick­ets with his right-arm fast-medi­um bowl­ing.

Mur­ray who cap­tained the West In­dies Un­der-19 team in the late 70s asked the ques­tion: “How come some bats­men were able to score runs freely? How come some bats­men found the go­ing good when they set­tled down and built an in­nings? The ma­jor­i­ty of the bats­men played poor­ly, they were play­ing too fre­quent­ly across the line and paid the price. “

Mur­ray was al­so crit­i­cal of the for­eign el­e­ment at the tour­na­ment. “I think that the qual­i­ty of the in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers that they are bring­ing in are not up to mark and it showed. This is an­oth­er fac­tor that one has to take in­to ac­count and this must be looked at.”

For­mer min­is­ter of Sport Manohar Ram­saran who is the pitch con­sul­tant at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my al­so lent his voice to the sit­u­a­tion. “At the BLCA what peo­ple don’t un­der­stand is that we are af­fect­ed by the close­ness of the Gulf of Paria. Al­though the drainage at the fa­cil­i­ty is world-class, the wa­ter ta­ble of the gen­er­al area of high be­cause the sea is close­by. So when we have rain at the fa­cil­i­ty who get the top 12 inch­es or so drain­ing won­der­ful­ly well and play gets back on in no time. How­ev­er, the gen­er­al area un­der­neath that is still wet be­cause of the high wa­ter ta­ble and this leads to the pitch play­ing slow.

“I thought we did a good job in get­ting the pitch to play as well as it did give the cir­cum­stances and I too would say that the bats­men were found want­i­ng on the day. The heavy mois­ture we have to con­tend with will lead to the pitch­es be­ing on the slow­er side. The top ap­pears hard which all bats­men love as the ball comes nice­ly un­to the bat. How­ev­er, just be­low it is soft and hence the rea­son we can’t have the fastest pitch.”