Col­in EH Croft

Present West In­dies pitch­es are killing our fast bowlers and spin­ners too!

I of­ten won­der if (Sir) Wes Hall, Michael Hold­ing, Joel Gar­ner, (Sir) Andy Roberts, Mal­colm Mar­shall, Ian Bish­op, Patrick Pat­ter­son, me–Col­in Croft–(Sir) Curt­ly Am­brose, Char­lie Grif­fith, Roy Gilchrist and Court­ney Walsh, the most ag­gres­sive and pro­duc­tive fast bowlers WI ever had, would have en­joyed bowl­ing on these bare flats present­ly dis­guised as WI Test pitch­es.

Sir Vi­vian Richards' Sta­di­um in An­tigua & Bar­bu­da and Grena­da's Na­tion­al Sta­di­um at Queen's Park had one thing in com­mon. Nei­ther pitch helped WI's bowlers.

Both pitch­es re­mained docile, not even de­te­ri­o­rat­ing. With luck, Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos would be more boun­cy and bowler-friend­ly.

In 1970's, 1980's, even 1990's, Caribbean pitch­es favoured nei­ther home nor tour­ing teams but pro­duced pos­i­tive re­sults. In­deed, had it been In­dia, Aus­tralia, Eng­land or Pak­istan, WI was reg­u­lar­ly up against a wall, but there were wins and loss­es.

In 1981, play­ing Eng­land in the Caribbean, af­ter beat­ing them 1-0 in Eng­land in 1980, all ex­pect­ed our pitch­es to have dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics, chal­leng­ing bowlers and bats­men to ad­just.

Port of Spain's Queen's Park Oval (QPO) was no­to­ri­ous as the most spin-friend­ly pitch here, that fact of­ten back-fir­ing on WI. Yet faster bowlers got wick­ets there too.

Bridgetown's Kens­ing­ton Oval was the fairest, fast but true. Bats­men who were ad­ven­tur­ous and skill­ful and bowlers who had dili­gence and know-how, got runs and wick­ets.

Guyana's Bour­da Oval was a dif­fi­cult pitch for bowlers, fast or slow, to op­er­ate on, that strip be­ing as flat as a run­way, still the best bat­ting track ever pro­duced in the Caribbean. How­ev­er, that same pitch in­di­rect­ly pro­duced not­ed off-spin­ner Lance Gibbs and fast bowler "Bomber" Croft!

At Bour­da in 2003, Shiv Chan­der­paul scored the fifth fastest Test cen­tu­ry against Aus­tralia. Aus­tralia won.

Sabi­na Park in Ja­maica, was eas­i­ly the best pitch for fast bowl­ing. One could see one's re­flec­tion any first morn­ing, so slick were those tracts there; like mir­rors; but bats­men with abil­i­ty al­so got many runs there too.

An­tigua's Recre­ation Ground was as great crick­et are­na, small, quaint but so much fun. With a rep­u­ta­tion of al­low­ing bats­men to get many runs, ala Bri­an Lara's 375 and 400 not out in Tests there, bowlers got wick­ets too, if they were good tri­ers. QPO, by 1981, was as un­pre­dictable as rains over the North­ern Range, pitch­es with spec­tac­u­lar, dark his­to­ries. Plans were flex­i­ble as ear­ly as the first morn­ing, even be­fore the toss was spun.

In 1971, Roy Fred­er­icks was bowled by the first ball of Test No 2 of that 5-Test se­ries, de­liv­ered by Syed Abid Ali, a de­liv­ery that did not bounce at all af­ter pitch­ing–a re­al, true "ground-eater!" In­dia won by sev­en wick­ets, win­ning that se­ries by that Test, 1-0.

Off-spin­ner Jack Nore­a­ga had WI's best Test one in­nings re­turn too, 9-95, but In­dia, with world class spin­ners Bishen Singh Be­di, Er­a­pali Prasan­na and Sr­ni­vas Venkataragha­van, still beat WI. In 1974, Eng­land beat WI in Test No 5 by just 26 runs, that se­ries drawn 1-1, due to late Tony Greig's un­be­liev­able match fig­ures of 69.1-17-156-13; bowl­ing sim­ple off-cut­ters and off-breaks.

Con­trast those to 1976, when In­dia set 403 runs to win, achieved that in­cred­i­ble to­tal of 406-4, beat­ing WI by six wick­ets, crown­ing Sunil Gavaskar, whose ex­ploits start­ed in 1971.

Yours tru­ly even had a good in­put at QPO, get­ting 8-29 ver­sus Pak­istan in 1977, the tourists still mak­ing 180. WI won but not be­fore Pak­istan's Sal­im Altaf had re­moved (Sir) Vi­vian Richards and Gor­don Greenidge with sim­i­lar "shoot­ers", as Abid Ali had done to Fred­er­icks in 1971.

Many who wit­nessed it still con­sid­er Hold­ing's first over to Eng­land's Ge­off Boy­cott in Bar­ba­dos in 1981 to be the great­est and fastest ini­tial over for any Test, that Kens­ing­ton Oval pitch boun­cy, fast but steady, the per­fect pitch for crick­et. Re­port­ed­ly, peo­ple even died from that over!

Yet, some­times for­got­ten is that Clive Lloyd, (Sir) Viv and Graeme Gooch each got cen­turies, the lat­ter's 116 prob­a­bly the best in­nings ever played against Hold­ing, Roberts, Gar­ner and Croft.

In 1999 at Kens­ing­ton Oval, Aus­tralia's Steve Waugh made 199, Ricky Ponting 104 and WI's Sher­win Camp­bell 105, yet Bri­an Lara's 153 no, to bring WI a one-wick­et win, is still con­sid­ered the best in­nings ever played in the Caribbean, with Aus­tralia's Shane Warne, Glen Mc Grath, Ja­son Gille­spie and Stu­art Mc Gill in at­ten­dance.

Sabi­na Park, 1977, (Sir) Andy tore the pro­tec­tive left pad from Pak­istan's Za­heer Ab­bas' leg; out lbw. Yet, de­spite much speed from that gild­ed pitch, Asif Iqbal made a tremen­dous 135 in a los­ing cause.

Sim­i­lar­ly, An­tigua's Recre­ation Ground in its first Test, 1981, had Pe­ter Wil­ley get­ting a su­perb 102 not out, Sir Viv 114 and Boy­cott 104, yours tru­ly get­ting 6-74, a good mix of use­ful bats­man­ship and de­ter­mined bowl­ing.

WI pitch­es "back in the day" were dif­fer­ent! Hall, Hold­ing, Gar­ner, Gilchrist et al no longer play, but present WI's fast bowlers are not quick enough nor good enough to get 20 wick­ets, even with help from spin­ners.

Hence, they need as­sis­tance from pitch­es, not these present-day grave­yards! En­joy!