Pakistan has stepped up its attempts to prepare a rotating pitch for the Test series decider against England, using industrial-sized fans, outdoor heaters and windbreaks in a bid to dry out the surface of the Rawalpindi cricket stadium.
Rawalpindi is usually one of the flattest pitches in Test cricket, with minimal assistance for the spinners. Bangladesh spin-off Mehidy Hasan Miraz took 10 wickets in their 2-0 series win in Rawalpindi last month, but since the venue hosted Tests again in 2019, spinners have averaged almost 50 runs per wicket there .
The seam bowlers have fared better, taking a wicket every 34 runs, with the average assisted by a Test against South Africa in January 2021. On a surface that offered assistance to the seamers throughout the game, Shaheen Afridi and Hasan Ali took nine of South Africa’s ten wickets in the fourth innings, eight of them on the final day. All four entries recorded scores between 200 and 300, which the PCB has previously considered to be the gold standard for a Pindi Test ground.
On Sunday, field crews had set up three large heaters and an industrial-sized fan at each end of the field, drying it with hot air, with a windbreak at each end to keep in the heat. Pakistan players and staff inspected the surface when they trained on Monday morning, at which point only the fans remained. It continued to dry in the afternoon heat.
Notably, the test strip is one of only three to have been cut along the square; the other two are practice strips, one on each side of the field. England’s seamers used a dry, abrasive square to spin the ball back in the second Test in Multan, but a grassy square and lush pitch may make that more challenging this week.
England did not train on Monday and have an open mind ahead of Tuesday’s session. “I don’t know what to expect. I haven’t seen anything,” Jack Leach, who is the series’ main wicket-taker, told the BBC. “We’ll go to training and have a look at it. I’m pretty clear about what I’m doing and that doesn’t really change depending on the wicket. We’ll see what it is.”
