Sunil Gavaskar: If you don’t score on turning pitches, you are not a great batter

Ranjan Madugalle has been the chief match referee of the ICC referees panel for over two decades. The former stylish middle-order batter from Sri Lanka is always smiling and has a lovely, cheeky sense of humour. He is the first pick of the ICC for the big-ticket series and the finals of ICC events. He is fair and firm without being imposing or intimidating, and, having played cricket at the highest level, understands the pressures and psyche of cricketers. That is why he allows some things to go by that other referees may pull players up for. This, as well as his pleasant demeanour, makes him extremely popular with the players of just about every cricket team whose games he has officiated in. So, if he has rated the Perth pitch as very good, then not too many from the cricketing world would quibble with that.

There’s one person who differs with that rating and, unlike many of the incensed voices from the sub-continent who were not even there, he actually played in the match. Usman Khawaja called the pitch a ‘piece of shit’. He explained that 19 wickets falling on day one and about 20 players getting hit says what the pitch was like. He also explained that watching Steve Smith, who he considers the best cricketer he’s ever played with, miss the ball and get hit on the elbow made him call the wicket on day one colourfully. By the way, Smith didn’t get hit on the front elbow but the back elbow, which explains the uneven and steep bounce of the pitch. Khawaja tempered his remarks by saying the pitch tends to play a bit better over the next couple of days. That still doesn’t excuse the behaviour of the pitch on day one this time, as well as last year when India played, where 17 wickets fell on day one, too.

Khawaja seems to have escaped censure from Cricket Australia, but if he doesn’t score runs in the Gabba Test, it won’t be a surprise if he is left out of the team. Australia now has another opener in Travis Head, whose unorthodox century delivered an easy win. Mind you, 13 wickets fell on day two also, but that century took away any chance of the pitch being rated ‘shit’ by anybody else. That century wasn’t always with what you would call Test match strokes and was more like white-ball cricket shots, but hey, who is complaining? Not the old powers, for sure.

Their narrative that a pitch with bounce and danger to life and limb is never bad, but that a pitch where the ball turns and keeps low is a disgrace, is sadly still believed even by the complex ones in the sub-continent. They will rate a batter only if he scores tons on pacy, bouncy pitches, but if a batter from their part of the world doesn’t get a century in the sub-continent, he will still be called great.

Having played a bit of cricket myself, I can say that batting against pace requires just two movements, forward or back. To counter spin, it is not just about playing forward or back, but also about going down the pitch to smother the turn and attack the ball. That’s where skill comes in. Yes, I am well aware that today some batters do advance down the pitch to the quicks, but it’s more a desperate, premeditated measure than a reflex technical move. It can come off, just as it does when batters move away from the stumps or across them to play limited-overs shots. More than skill, it is luck that makes it come off, but never on a consistent basis.

So, for me, playing on a turning pitch requires more talent and footwork than playing pace. That is why, if you don’t score runs on such surfaces, you are not a great batter. Since top-quality spin is seldom, if ever, seen in these countries and their pitches, the moment they see spin in the sub-continent, they get uncomfortable and question the quality of the pitch. That’s typical, but unless you score in foreign conditions, how can a batter be called great?

Similarly, even if their quicks didn’t get wickets on the sub-continent on pitches not conducive to pace, they would still be called great. But sub-continent spinners who failed to take fifers on their pacy pitches, or batters who didn’t score hundreds there, would not. The double standards are so glaring that they are now simply amusing.

The second Test is a few days away, and it’s at the Gabba, which is considered one of the fastest pitches in Australia. Remember a Test against South Africa a few years back at the Gabba that also finished in a couple of days, with the ball flying off a length and bouncing over the keeper’s head for byes. It was sheer luck that no player got seriously injured. The excuse? The curator got it wrong by leaving a bit more grass on it, or so the world was told. Did the pitch get a poor rating? No, sir, those are reserved only for the pitches in the sub-continent.

Published on Dec 01, 2025