Australian captain Steve Smith said excess grass on the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) pitch made batting difficult during the fourth Ashes Test, which ended inside two days as England won by four wickets on Saturday.A total of 36 wickets fell across six sessions, with 20 wickets on the opening day and 16 on the second. England’s win ended their long wait for a Test victory in Australia.
Smith said the 10mm grass left on the surface played a key role in how the pitch behaved.“It probably started quite slow and it’s hard to explain. Not tennis bally normally, that’s from like the moisture of the wicket,” Smith said during the post-match press conference.He added that the thickness of the grass affected how the ball behaved after pitching.“I think because of the thickness of the grass. The ball was just sitting in the grass, if that makes sense to you. Like I felt in the first innings, a couple almost like chipped one to mid on playing a defensive shot that just sort of sat in the grass and it was tricky to drive the ball because of how much it was. The seam was just catching the grass and it was stopping,” he said.Smith said the surface offered too much seam movement, making it hard for batters to settle.“It was tricky. No one could really get in. I think when you see 36 wickets across two days, that’s probably too much,” he said.He suggested that a slightly shorter grass covering might have helped.“It probably did a little bit more than they wanted it to. Maybe if we dropped it down to eight millimetres, it would be about right,” Smith said.England captain Ben Stokes also said a Test match finishing inside two days was “not what you want”, though he added that teams had to deal with the conditions presented.“When you go out there and you’re faced with those conditions, you’ve got to crack on and deal with it,” Stokes said. “But being brutally honest, that’s not really what you want.”
