It was obvious why Jonathan Trott didn’t want to be overly critical about the pitch in Tarouba. His team had after all just received a hammering at the hand of South Africa in their first-ever World Cup semi-final. They’d just had their dream run in the tournament cut short in rather terse fashion, courtesy the South African fast bowlers. But for as ruthless as Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen and Anrich Nortje were, the pitch at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy ground played an equally significant role in the decimation of the Afghanistan batting line-up. As it easily could have for the South Africans, if only they had been chasing a target slightly more challenging than 57.
And it is unlikely that Trott, the Afghanistan head coach, was the only one of those involved in the contest who felt like that the pitch in Trinidad wasn’t fit to host a “semi-final of a World Cup”. Every player, in particular, who took the field on Wednesday (June 26) night would have had every reason to have a grouse with what was dished up to them in a match of such significance, or even otherwise for that matter.
“I don’t want to get myself into trouble but obviously and I don’t want to come across as bitter or it being a case of sour grapes but that’s not the pitch that you want to have a match, a semi-final of a World Cup on, plain and simple,” said Trott after South Africa booked their place in their first-ever men’s World Cup final with a nine-wicket win in a match that lasted 21 overs in all.
“It should be a fair contest. I’m not saying it should be flat completely with no spin and no seam movement, but I’m saying you shouldn’t have batsmen worrying about going forward in the ball, flying over their head. You should be confident in their foot movement and being able to hit through the line or use their skills. T20 is about attacking and about scoring runs and taking wickets, not looking to survive,” he added.
It was a fair point too. For, there were times during both innings where, as a batter all you could do was to survive. To get into a decent position and hope for the best. Hope that the ball doesn’t jump at you off a length at rib-height, like it did to Quinton de Kock off the second ball he faced from Naveen-ul-Haq. Or that it doesn’t roll through at shin-height like it did with the first ball de Kock faced, and what many of the batters had to contend with repeatedly during the highly-truncated semi-final. And Trott had every reason to go on.
“If the opposition bowled well and got to a position where they bowled very, very well and it’s through skill then that’s fine to them and then it’s about adapting to that. But once the ball starts misbehaving and rolling, if we had bowled as straight as South Africa had, I think you would have seen a very interesting second half as well. South Africa bowled well, used the conditions, and showed our boys what it’s capable of. But it just didn’t go our way tonight,” he said, somewhat shifting the focus back to his team.
In a World Cup, where there’s been plenty of chatter about the nature of the surfaces, especially on the New York leg, but also in terms of some in the Caribbean, the one in Tarouba came probably the closest to being deemed “unsafe”. That’s not overstating a fact either. There were some deliveries that flew off a length across both innings, which could potentially have caused a lot more serious damage than what we got away with. The fact that de Kock was the only batter who needed some brief medical attention is if anything more a case of fortune than skill.
South African captain Aiden Markram wasn’t as candid about his views on the pitch that his team recorded history on, but did use the word “challenging” a few times, having indicated how the Proteas had already had to overcome some “challenging” conditions before getting here.
“The wickets that we’ve had throughout the competition have been pretty challenging. Tonight’s wicket was pretty challenging once again. It’s hard to say that a wicket is not good because it can’t just always be a batter’s game, but I think if we reflect back on this wicket, we’ll probably be pretty happy that we’re not playing here again.”
Even though he wasn’t, Markram could easily have been speaking on behalf of every batter who had to put his skills on the line at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy over the last fortnight with the three matches leading into the semifinal on these pitches having yielded scores of 95, 40 and 78 before Afghanistan were blown away for 56 in just 11.5 overs. The unacceptable pitch conditions might well get swept under in the wake of what was an emotional night for South African men’s cricketers of all recent eras. But it would be unfair on both teams, and those paying a lot of money and traveling a lot of miles to get to the venue, if the pitch for the semi-final didn’t come under heavy scrutiny because, even if Trott didn’t quite use the expression, this was unfit for an international match, forget a highly-billed World Cup semifinal.
