Here we go again - complaints about the Queen's Park Oval's pitch. The latest salvo comes from none other than Floyd Reifer, head coach of the West Indies Emerging Players Team who, reportedly, is less than impressed with the “benign” playing surfaces being prepared for matches at the Oval.
With all due respect, Mr Reifer, you played only one game at the Queen's Park Oval vs the T&T Red Force and before the Guyana Jaguars game, you looked at the pitch and decided that because Guyana included an extra spinner at the expense of Nial Smith, the pitch was heavily in favour of the spinners. What you should have taken into account was the fact that Smith had bowled eight overs for 61 runs against the Windward Islands Volcanoes, having been hammered for over 20 runs in his 8th over; and just maybe the Guyana selectors lost faith in him.
Your team won both games with some scintillating cricket of which you should be proud. Your young talents with scores of 243 in 50 overs and 167 for 8 in 30 overs, were good returns on a supposedly pro-spinner surface with young Justin Greaves scoring 80 and 53. Now, I saw this young man bat both live and on television; he was superb and once he stays grounded, he is one for the future. His array of shots off both the front and back foot was a sight to behold. He played one shot, in particular, off the back foot to Raymon Reifer which had me at my (young) age very excited.
Mr Reifer, I don't know if you saw Jonathan Foo's innings of 67 - or perhaps you were too nervous to watch - but his shot selection was excellent especially off the front foot and his timing was arguably better than your Rolex. But, let's backtrack a little, Mr Reifer. For your information, the Volcanoes, in the first game on the surface, got 238 for 8 with half-centuries from Kavem Hodge and Desron Maloney. Then, in 42.5 overs, the Red Force got 239 for 2 with Jeremy Solozano 102 not out and Darren Bravo 115 not out; Christopher Barnwell had scores of 80 and 89; Tion Webster scored 87 off of 60 balls and in the game between the Jaguars and the Volcanoes (reduced to 42 overs), Devon Smith's 93 helped his team reach 258 for 5 in 42 overs and the Jaguars got home with 4 balls to spare at 260 for 6. Oh, and I nearly forgot, Yannick Ottley's courageous knock of 71 with 4 sixes that nearly won them the match against your youngsters. In the recently concluded game, Guyana got a whopping 294 for 9 with Chanderpaul Hemraj getting a 100 and Kavem Hodge 123 out of 272 for 8.
Now, let's turn our attention to the bowlers and this pitch that you have said leans too heavily in favour of spinners. In the first game, Anderson Phillip and Webster accounted for 5 of the 9 wickets; Reifer took 5 against the USA. Against your team, Phillip and Smith picked up 4 and young Keon Harding scalped 4 vs the Red Force. Without going into more individual performances, in retrospect, the fast bowlers have accounted for 48 wickets whereas the spinners have bagged 49 wickets thus far in the games at the Oval. This tally is up to the just concluded Volcanoes vs the Jaguars game. I am not sure about you, but I would not assess that pitch to be too heavily in favour of spinners based on the factual numbers. Even if the pitches were in favour of spinners, it would lend the ideal opportunity for our batsmen to learn how to cope with spinners as we have seemed to struggle lately against spin. We only have to look at the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and see who, year after year, account for the majority of the wickets. On tour, we struggle in places like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and not to mention India. I am not for one moment suggesting we should have turners - we need good cricket pitches for one-day games with an emphasis on batsmen playing rasping shots all around the wicket and to be fair, I think the Oval pitches for the Super 50 games have done just that. Would one have preferred grassy tracks with the ball seaming about and the batsmen struggling to put bat to ball?
I looked carefully at the Oval track and while I admit they are brown and devoid of grass, one must remember October, and in particular November, are extremely rainy months therefore the covers would have to remain on and stay for a longer period over the cricket square, much more than in the drier months of the year. If the covers are perpetually on, the grass tends to get yellow and soft because of a lack of sunlight. Then, when the heavy roller goes on to the pitch, it crushes the grass and leaves just the root, therefore, it becomes increasingly difficult for grass to grow in the area of the pitches. The other problem that arises is the more you keep the covers on it affects the pace of the pitch unless sufficient sunshine exists to make the track faster.
A brown pitch with no grass does not necessarily mean it's a spinners paradise - it will give you a higher bounce, whereas a pitch with grass on it will make it skid on and seam about. Is that what is good for the one day game? I think not.
Let's hope Mr Reifer forgets about the Oval pitch because his team may well qualify for the semi-finals and they are such a great and talented bunch whom I enjoy looking at. It would be an absolute pity to fill their heads with garbage.
Editor's note: The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and do not reflect the views of any organisation of which he is a stakeholder.