Last week I spent my time in Headingley. It was one of the best test matches I’ve ever been to. It started with a monumental collapse. Then the Pakistan attack when batting. Then a bowling comedian took a quick 6 for. Only for Australia to fight back into the game lead by their youngest player and dashing batting. And the whole game finished as Pakistan seemed to do everything in their power to lose it.

It lasted 3 days, 1 hour and 5 minutes.

Other than the Yorkshire board, no one felt cheated.

It was one of the closest fought test matches I’ve ever been at. At times the cricket was proper good. Asif and Aamer’s bowling and Smith’s batting. At other times it was just embarrassing. Amin and Watson getting wickets. At all times it was entertaining. The ball swung, seamed, spun, and batsmen who weren’t giving their wickets away or being found out technique wise were able to score pretty quickly.

That it lasted just over 3 days doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the wicket, actually, it means the opposite. Here was a pitch that batsman couldn’t bully on. Bowlers were always in the game, had the batsman had the technique to combat a pitch like this, it could have easily gone into the 5th day.

It didn’t, because of pitches like this one at the SSC.

8 wickets in the first 3 days of that test. Even if this test gets a result, this is not a good test. It is a terrible test. If the pitch eventually crumbles, the bowlers will be back in the game, but we will still had to have sit through 3 days of pointless stat collecting by batsmen.

I want Kumar and Sehwag to make big runs, but I want them to do it when the bowlers have a chance against them. Like Kumar’s brilliant 192 against Australia when no one else made a hundred, or Sehwag’s one man show against Sri Lanka when he made 201* out of a total of 329. Those were innings when champion batsmen overcame something, which makes them more special.

Runs on pitches like this SSC one mean very little. The bowlers are not in the game; they are hardly required at all. New ball bowlers come on and get smashed, spin bowlers come on and do everything they cannot to be smashed. Wickets come from luck and lapses in concentration. It isn’t a fair fight. And it makes the tests bloody dull.

These test pitches are all over the world now. They are 70% to 80% of all test wickets. Every country in the world will put out wickets like this, and so when you end up in Headingley, batsmen have no idea. Headingley had swing, but not all the time, it had seam, but very little of it, and it spun, but slowly. Yet both teams made this wicket look unplayable at times. Only because they don’t play on wickets like this very often.

If you play on wickets where you could make runs batting with a rolled up newspaper, how will you react to a pitch that gives the bowlers assistance?

So here are my thoughts, if you are running cricket in a test-playing nation (not a major one, but someone like WI, NZ or SL) you have just received the ICC memo to make pitches that help bowlers more.

Use that memo as an excuse to make sure all your wickets seam or spin violently. Be prepared to even lose a few test series as your batsmen get used to it. But, after a while, your batsmen will be the only ones who do. They will be playing half the time on wickets that help bowlers, meaning that their techniques will tighten, and they will become better players. You will also bring the crowds in. In test cricket, crowds like wickets, not runs. Short tests with plenty of wickets will have people coming back to cricket. You will also win most of your series at home. Meaning your ICC ranking will go up, and people will start to talk about you more. That means the bigger test nations will want to play you more often in bigger tours. When you do play away, your batsmen will ready for any kind of pitches, and your bowlers will have the confidence of test wickets behind them.

All that is required is pitches helpful to bowlers. Nothing more. The rest will take care of itself. There is no point having a test that last 5 days if everyone is snoring by day 3. Get those pitches seaming and spinning. Give the bowlers a chance, and make the batsmen work for it.

Once the batsmen start getting embarrassed again, you know you are on the right track.