Pitches for Fast Bowling - 0.1
Coming up in the game, one of the hardest competitors I had to face up to was… the cricket pitch!
Why?
Because no matter how fast I bowled or how hard I tried, if the pitch didn’t suit fast bowling, my efforts were not rewarded.
As a junior cricketer, I never really understood why.
It would frustrate me whenever I would bang the ball in and the reaction off of the surface was minimal or sometimes even dead.
I remember speaking to senior professionals about this. They would explain to me that on some surfaces, you need to ‘kiss’ the deck rather than ‘hit’ the deck.
Again, I never understood this concept!
Call me naive, but I actually thought that the pitch had nothing to do with speed. For me, it was down to all-out effort. Whenever the ball would die off of the pitch, I would use it as motivation to try even harder.
Errr, how wrong was I?!
Or should I say, how inexperienced was I?!
Our latest series on Pace Journal blows the cover on the importance of a cricket pitch for bowling fast. It’s the first time we’ve produced a series from the perspective of someone other than a bowler or a coach. Much of the motivation for this series was simple; who knows a cricket pitch better than the creator of the cricket pitch?
In the series, we team up with Rob Court, the Head Groundsman at the prestigious private school, Caldicott. Not only is Rob a phenomenal young groundsman, but he’s also the 1st XI captain of Taplow Cricket Club and (wait for it), the wicketkeeper too!
Rarely do you get the opportunity to pick the brains of someone as qualified and experienced as Rob. Don’t miss this!
On top of this, we’re also throwing in some bonus content featuring England international speedster, Tymal Mills who will be sharing his experiences of bowling on pitches around the world.
One of the most common things you will hear after a game from fast bowlers on the club circuit is, “the pitch was dead. It had nothing in it for the seamers. The spinners came on early and bowled the entire innings”. Whilst this is true in most cases, it also indicates that the strategy employed by club bowlers isn’t in-line with what the pitch has to offer - this is precisely why we wanted to produce a series of educational content for the seamers to better understand (1) what a fast and bouncy pitch looks like, (2) how to identify a fast and bouncy pitch and (3) what to do if the pitch isn’t supporting speed and bounce.
You can catch all of the content on the official Pace Journal Instagram account.
“Trying to bowl fast on a lifeless pitch is like trying to flog a dead horse. Pointless.
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