With the Caribbean Premier League done and dusted, criticisms have poured in over the poor standard of the Queen’s Park Oval pitches.
The latest criticism came in from veteran commentator, Joseph ‘Reds’ Perreira.
Tournament Director of Operations, Michael Hall, however, was not too keen on blaming the pitches when they appeared on the Mason and Guest show last week.
The tournament was housed solely in Trinidad and Tobago and due to a condensed fixture, the two venues, Brian Lara Cricket Academy and Queen’s Park Oval, were subjected to rigorous days of cricket.
According to Perreira, the conditions should have been made more pro-batting and all measures should have been taken in light of players coming into the tournament after five months away from the game.
“Because the Queen’s Park Oval was turning as everybody saw, I felt that having stated the players were undercooked, everybody was undercooked, rusty, it really meant that every effort should have been made, even if you had to ask the groundsman at the Queen’s Park oval to step aside, every effort should have been made to get the batting conditions as good as you could, as pro batting as you could in the circumstances,” Perreira reasoned.
Hall accepted the point made by Perreira but chuckled, “I definitely take the point but getting the head curator at the Queen’s Park Cricket Club to step aside is perhaps easier said than done. Notwithstanding that we did rent the venue and so on.”
Hall did disclose that the CPL governing body was unhappy with the pitches and has since made their opinions known but did not go into detail of the dialogue between the two entities.
“I have no qualms about saying we weren’t happy with the wicket at Queen’s Park Oval because we have said so or said as much to them. I don’t want to say too much into it but let’s just say our displeasure was presented in the strongest possible terms and leave it at that for the moment,” Hall stated.
He did say however, “Were the CPL as a league particularly happy with the quality of the pitches or square at Queen’s Park Oval? No…we weren’t particularly happy with the preparation of that square and I think it showed…”
Nevertheless, Hall sought to contextualize the use of the pitches and reckoned that it is possible that this was the first time a venue would have come under such a heavy workload.
Hall accepted that this year there were lower totals scored but was not keen on blaming the pitches.
He stated, “I wouldn’t be too quick to blame the pitches, I think whenever something goes wrong when a T20 game is played and somebody doesn’t score 190 or 200 runs they say the pitches were not good.”
Hall reasoned, “I’m not going to lay too much blame on the pitches just yet, I mean some teams struggled to score 90 in a match did so against a team that just made 170 and they didn’t change pitches in the interval so I am not going to blame the pitches just yet.”
