London: Despite England batsmen’s failure to play on spin-friendly pitches in India, former England pace bowler Angus Fraser has called on the England and Wales Cricket Board to dish out good, sporting surfaces for the County cricket championship in order to instil confidence in batsmen and bowlers.
“All pitches need to produce good cricket, that’s the starting point. Batsmen need to bat on surfaces that they can trust, so that they can play their shots and they’re not fearful that there’s a ball coming around the corner with their name on it, and therefore think, well, I’ll be aggressive and try and make it pay until that ball comes along,” Fraser, who is also the director of cricket at Middlesex, was quoted as saying by espn.in.
“And bowlers have got to bowl with discipline. They’ve got to learn to be accurate, as well as spin the ball or bowl with pace, and they’re going to learn those skills by playing on good surfaces,” he added.
England batsmen struggled to bat in three of the four-Test matches where the ball spun from very early stages, especially in the second and third Tests which saw spin from the first session itself.
Fraser felt that the Counties too need to look at the long-term future and not seek short-term results.
“You can’t get funky with pitches. We’ve turned up at some grounds, historically, and there are saucer-shaped areas outside off stump on the spinners length that look completely different from the rest of the pitch,” he said.
“To me that’s a very short-term look at things. If we’re trying to produce decent cricketers, we want to play on good surfaces and we want to encourage groundsmen to produce those, rather than compromise by asking them to produce something completely in favour of the home side.”
