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Are Pakistani domestic pitches easier to bat or easier to bowl on?

ahmedwaqas92

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This thread can't get any simpler than how it's described in the title. So people who are well versed in how pitches play in Pakistani domestics and all of us who might have an insight on the matter; come to a relevant conclusion ?!?!

I would appreciate if we can have sound logical answers to the said query. Would most certainly decide the debate on players like Fawad and Sadaf. I mean... it could only be that one is actually better in his primary job and is not assisted by 'conditions' to churn out those numbers season after season.

Discuss
 
Pakistan is a big country man

I think in Punjab and Peshawar theres a lot of grass so hard to bat

Rest its flat i would assume

but nowwhere does it have bounce. Hence wierd techniques
 
Pakistan is a big country man

I think in Punjab and Peshawar theres a lot of grass so hard to bat

Rest its flat i would assume

but nowwhere does it have bounce. Hence wierd techniques

So Batsmen who come from the south should average a certain number to be qualified for selection ?? Ok Fair Enough....But can we then have the same filtration from bowlers who are feasting in the Upper Provinces ??
 
So Batsmen who come from the south should average a certain number to be qualified for selection ?? Ok Fair Enough....But can we then have the same filtration from bowlers who are feasting in the Upper Provinces ??

the problem is that is not good logic

for eg it is not necessary that a batsman from karachi will play most of his domestic cricket there, or a lahori bowler will play most of his cricket in lahore.

due to deparment system not many really know what is homeground of many plaayers lol. I mean im sure we could find out by following patterns on cricinfo bt does anyone care. Sure as hell the selectors dont :))

also its not like bowlers of the north who average crazy numbers get their shot either
 
From what I have heard about FC pitches is that they are slow(something which I have seen for myself as well) which makes it hard for the faster bowlers to bowl and also discourage stroke making but they are also under-prepared, a term you will often hear associated with our domestic pitches. It's basically like starting a match on a day 3 pitch and a slow one at that. What happens is that these pitches have uneven bounce and if there is some grass on there they become difficult to bat on. This doesn't exactly help the bowlers develop since uneven bounce and a bit of movement gets the batsmen out without the bowlers doing much. The batsmen can't really develop a good technique due to the slowness and honestly there really is not much a batsman can do against uneven bounce, if anything it ruins their techniques. Do keep in mind this is all what I have heard from players, experts and coaches etc. The only thing I can testify to is the general slowness of the pitches.

You can note how trundlers without any real skills are successful in Pakistan's FC cricket.

For limited over pitches I will outright say that they are the absolute worst sort of pitches imaginable. They are extremely slow which is why any half decent spinner will have good figures and why trundlers do so well. The ball does not come on to the bat which is why we see our tournaments are so low scoring. These sort of pitches simply do not prepare our batsmen for modern day LO cricket.
 
It depends - more or less every wicket in PAK is similar, which is the biggest surprise to me considering the size of the country. Apart from difference from climate, characteristics of the wickets are almost same from Peshawar to Karachi. For a country of the size a little bigger than SRL, ENG has completely different surface in 2 grounds, may be even as close as 10 KM.

I think, PAK wickets are not conducive to any thing that is good in cricket - batting, bowling, fielding.

Fielding is easily identifiable - 75-80% wickets are down to bowled or LBW & may be 3 or 4 catches go to slip, then half of those are dropped. Fielding is a thankless job & it won't improve, unless drop catches are hurting in domestic level. When 30 of the 40 wickets in a FC match goes down to Bowled/LBW, I don't think catching will ever improve & this is purely because of the wicket - edges don't carry, neither ball deviates much to take the edge.

Batting is conditional - KAkmal did wonders this year, but PAK wickets are made for very limited batsmen, whose main strength is blocking, patience to bat for long hours without hitting a boundary & very limited back-foot game. Fawad, Azhar, Asif Zakir, Usman, Isarullah, Manzoor, Misbah, Hasan Raja, Farhat, Shehzad .... these are most successful players whose game actually are very much limited. Besides, dead slow & low wickets don't help to develop back-foot game; therefore hardly any PAK batsman can cut, pull or drive on the rise, unless it's a rank half volley - I can predict that Tamim's FC stats will be much, much inferior than Shaan Masood on those wickets. Still, batting is functional at Test level for the nature of the game. However, match duration is not suitable for building the habit of big scores.

PAK wickets are worst for bowlers - it's almost killing the fundamental skills of a bowler - pace, bounce, swing, cut, flight, spin. Moreover, matches are played for 70-75 overs/day, which doesn't help developing appropriate physical condition of the pacers & these wickets don't break much - spinners has nothing in it even on Day 4. This has created a series of accurate medium pacers, whose best quality is line length - they can't bowl fast, neither can use the new ball & conventional swing is almost nonexistent. What they do is seem around greenish wickets, which becomes gun barrel straight with international quality ball & wickets. It's even worse for spinners - hardly any bounce, dead slow turn & short duration match in Oct-Dec doesn't allow the wicket to break - result is lots of darters. Classical spinners weapons - loop, flight, drift & turn is almost gone; every team has 2/3 left-armers, who basically are fast darters, bowls round the wicket, within sticks & the wicket gives them lots of LBW/Bowled. For a spinner like Babar, his domestic stats are twice the better than Test stats, despite playing many Tests in Asia & against sub-standard teams against spin. On contrary, the 2 most skillful bowlers in recent times - Asif & Ajmal once had lower Test average than domestics. Their unique skills with ball often are nullified by the tracks.

Overall, wickets are not good for any cricket skills & most of the domestic List A/T20 are decided by toss, which doesn't reflect a healthy state.
 
If a batsman is doing well on Lahore/Multan/Faisalabad/Pindi/Peshawar pitches then he might be genuinely better than his peers.

If a bowler is doing well on Karachi/Hyderabad pitches then he might be genuinely better than his peers.
 
Pakistan is a big country man

I think in Punjab and Peshawar theres a lot of grass so hard to bat

Rest its flat i would assume

but nowwhere does it have bounce. Hence wierd techniques

Peshawar is arguably the flattest track in the country.

Lahore is quite lively.
 
First two days, Sadaf cashes in. Last two days, Fawad cashes in.

Sadaf is no worse than any pace bowler in the second innings, and better than quite a few.

The question is always why they would cash in more than others?

The most plausible answer is that they are better.

Hence it is also not surprising that Sadaf has done well all across the country.
 
Peshawar is not some mountainous area or at high altitude that you get green tops, the place is like an oven in the summer and mild in the winter, abbotabad however that is a different story.
 
Post 6 covers the pitch issue well. Ideally, you'd want a variety of pitches so that cricketers get exposed to different conditions and develop the different skills needed to adapt to them. How can you develop a backfoot game on low bounce wickets or develop your technique against spin on pitches that don't deteriorate ?

Australia during their golden age is a prime example. You had Hobart that assisted seam, Perth and Brisbane pitches that offered pace and bounce and dry Sydney pitches that would offer spin. In recent years as Australia have moved to producing flat drop-ins, their batsmen have suffered for it. South Africa is another example.

Lahore should be a hard, bouncy wicket but generally good for batting.
Peshawar and Rawalpindi can be English-style seamers.
The rest can be traditional Asian slow, low turners.

Pakistani curators (read farmers) should also spare us this rubbish about SC weather making it difficult to produce sporting wickets - if Sri Lanka can do it why not us ? How does the weather prevent you from producing wickets with good bounce ?
 
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