Speaking to Fox Cricket\u2019s podcast\u00a0The Follow On<\/i>\u00a0ahead of the first Test at the ground since that match, Border said the Gabba was usually a superb ground to host the long form of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe actual surface that you play on, the pitch itself, is a great cricket wicket. It offers something for everyone,\u201d he told Fox Cricket.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously the faster men enjoy the pace and bounce. The spinners get a little bit of turn and bounce and obviously batting, once you get through the new ball, it is a great place to play as a batsman.<\/p>\n
\u201cPink ball Test matches are a slightly different kettle of fish but it is a great place to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
But after Australian captain Pat Cummins defied conventional wisdom and sent the West Indies into bat at Adelaide Oval with great success last week, Border hopes the Gabba pitch provides a more even contest between the bat and the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully they don\u2019t leave too much grass on the surface,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know with the pink ball, the problem is that it wears very quickly if it is an abrasive surface. (This) is why they are leaving a lot of grass on the pitches, particularly for pink ball games. It does degenerate or disintegrate more than the red ball over that period of 80-odd overs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is hard to manufacture it exactly right. You want to produce a good pitch that gives everyone an opportunity. (I want) a good surface that is fair for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Border, who played 156 Tests for Australia and made 11,174 runs at an average of 50.56, said he is not surprised fast bowlers have been the dominant force throughout the summer.<\/p>\n Josh Hazlewood claimed nine wickets in Adelaide in a match Australia won within seven sessions, though Travis Head claimed man of the match honours for his century.<\/p>\n Cummins, who was the leading wicket taker in the three Test series against Pakistan, continued his golden summer with a four wicket haul in the opening innings of the Test.<\/p>\n Adelaide Oval has generally been considered a good pitch to bat on but Border is not certain that is now the case, worrying some pitches around the country might be losing their character.<\/p>\n \u201c(Drop in pitches) are very similar in their characteristics and to make them work well, they have to leave a lot of grass on their surface,\u201d he told\u00a0The Follow On<\/i>.<\/p>\n \u201cThat, in itself, leads to the faster bowlers gaining a bigger advantage, particularly when you start to play day-night games with pink balls and things like that.<\/p>\n \u201cThe old traditional surface, particularly at Adelaide Oval, was a very good surface that degenerated over five days so that the spinners came into the game and it was an up and down surface. There was a lot more variety in terms of how the surface played.<\/p>\n \u201cIt looked like a pretty difficult pitch in Adelaide \u2026 and if the game had gone a little bit longer, it would have been quite interesting to see how the scores and everything panned out.\u201d<\/p>\n While Border praised veteran off-spinner Nathan Lyon, who secured three wickets at his favourite ground, he said pitches were increasingly advantageous to fast bowlers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pitches themselves, drop in pitches, have different characteristics and leaving more grass on them certainly does help the bowlers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that is the trend we are seeing, although in Australia\u2019s case we have Nathan Lyon doing a fantastic job for us bowling his off-spinners.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is hope for half-decent spinners. But there is just not too much quality spin around and everyone is focusing on the faster bowler.\u201d<\/p>\n But Border was full of praise for the Australian attack, noting that they \u201chunt in a pack\u201d in a manner similar the great West Indian attacks he once faced when captaining his nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cricket has become a fast bowlers paradise with premier pacemen benefiting from innovations to the sport that have made batting increasingly difficult, according to Australian great Allan… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":83770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}