davebirch
Senior Member
There's a significant difference between the techniques required to play winning cricket in England and winning cricket in Australia on their concrete-hard pitches but neither visiting side seems to come to terms with that.
Look at the team of super Aussie batsmen in the 2015 ashes series - 136 all out at Edgbaston, 60 all out (how we chuckled) at Trent Bridge. Playing on the front foot to balls that are seaming around. Boycott reckoning his mum must be in the top 3 in the world if Steve Smith was.
Then we go to Aus and look like rabbits in the headlights at times with 90-odd mph balls whizzing past our ears and our bowlers make even their average batsmen look like world-beaters.
You would think that we would have more chance of reproducing their pitch conditions (artificially) than they have of reproducing ours but it never seems to happen and we almost always seem ill prepared when we turn up down under.
If we lose this ashes series I would be fairly confident that in a couple of summers we will have them back again (although there will be no Jimmy Anderson by then).
Anyway, the rain helped us today, so let's see if we can adapt a bit better tomorrow and bat through the day.
WB most pitches in Aus are now "drop in", meaning they are prepared outside the ground and are put in position after the end of the football season. The grounds are used for Aussie rules in winter.