Whether in Sharjah or Mohali, surfaces being used as excuse for the failures of touring sides

Rarely in sport does the condition of the surface have such an influence as cricket, but it is now becoming an excuse to hide behind for travelling teams, argues Osman Samiuddin.

Pakistan wrapped up the Test series against England at Sharjah last week, in part to the spinner-friendly pitch. Jason O'Brien / Reuters

In April 2012, the International Cricket Council (ICC) held its first workshop for curators. That it was the first was surprising, given how much cricket obsesses about the surfaces it is played on.

To a degree that is understandable because few sports are as reliant on the surface for the quality of contest as cricket. But the obsession usually goes beyond healthy.

At the workshop, to which arrived curators from around the globe, a few messages were clear. One, they needed to do this more, to create a brotherhood of sorts.

To a man, they spoke of the immense learning gleaned from each other’s vastly differing experiences with soil, climate and equipment.

Another was the distinct and shared sense that their work is misunderstood; that they are too often picked upon by people who have little understanding of what they do. They carried the grievances of an underclass.

Among the more telling remarks was this: “There are very few skilled cricketers that can read a pitch and very few curators that can predict what will happen tomorrow.”

Or this: “We’re there to be one of the excuses if someone has a bad day.”

The truth in the words above has been especially resonant over the past few days. After the second day of the Sharjah Test between Pakistan and England, for example, Misbah-ul-Haq complained bitterly about the kind of surface he had been given.

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Pakistan had been bowled out for 234 on the first day, on a surface that spun far more than anticipated. Then it held firm, and England looked on the second day as if they had consolidated their grip.

Yet Pakistan’s batsmen had only themselves to blame; at least six dismissals were self-inflicted. And they won the Test on the final day, their pacemen having reversed the ball, their spinners having found bounce and spin.

To what end, then, Misbah’s complaints, having made an untroubled 71 that first day?

Right through the series Pakistan muttered about the pitches.

In Dubai, coach Waqar Younis bore down upon the curator, Tony Hemming, to shave off what little grass remained a day before the Test.

It was not an overly friendly interaction and Pakistan have been clipping away at Hemming’s ambit over Dubai pitches for some time.

Nobody was happy with the Abu Dhabi surface, though Alastair Cook made a reasonable assessment after the Test finished: if the match had begun on what was the second-day surface it would have been fine. Incidentally, that surface was rated “below average” by the ICC, thus escaping censure.

Misbah and Pakistan are not alone. India’s three-day win over South Africa in Mohali came on a dry surface, friendly to spin but not to the degree the scorecard suggests.

It would be a surprise if the next three surfaces are not as similar to this as possible; suited, that is, indisputably to India’s strengths.

Home teams have always done this, of course. But that insistence has acquired a greater urgency and desperation in recent years, and subsequently so too the irritation at not getting what they want.

There is not an Indian pitch on this planet, for example, that MS Dhoni has not criticised. This summer, Cook and Trevor Bayliss wanted “typical English seaming wickets” after not being happy with the surfaces they did get.

Maybe all this is more pronounced because we are still coming out of an era in which, spurred by West Indian and Australian greatness, every side seemed to understand that playing well in all conditions, no matter the surface, was not only an admirable goal, but an attainable one.

From 1980 to the end of 2004, according to ESPNcricinfo, the win-loss ratio of the top seven Test sides away from home was 0.64 (166 wins, 259 losses). Since the start of 2005, that has dropped to around 0.47.

Now, sides are not just incapable of winning on unfamiliar surfaces.

They are also unwilling to see it as quite the same driving motivation it used to be to Imran Khan’s Pakistan, or Steve Waugh’s Australia.

Now, a side gets thumped abroad and instead of wanting to correct that, they seem only to think: “Wait till you come to us, on our pitches”.

Now, a warped equivalency is at play. If so-and-so fails in Mumbai, then it is the same as so-and-so failing at Trent Bridge. How about the team that succeeds in both?

South Africa have been an exception in this mini-era, having not lost an away series since 2006.

Going by Mohali, though, that streak may now be under its gravest threat.

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