Perth – A week out from the series opener and, once again, everyone is guessing about the pitch. The drop-in surface at Optus Stadium went in barely a month ago, the weather has been oddly wet for late November, and both camps are swapping stories of balls climbing nastily in the practice nets. Good copy for the back pages, but nobody seems certain how it will actually play when the first delivery is bowled.
Mitchell Starc, asked if the tabloids’ “Green Monster” tag held any truth, sounded unconvinced. “The wickets out the back have had a bit of sideways, and up and down,” he said. “I’m not going to pretend I know how to read wickets until they’re played on. A fair bit has been made about the colour of it and that it’s going to be a green mamba. I think it’s probably ready to go now, so I don’t expect to see it do as much as you all anticipate it to do.”
Optus Stadium has hosted only five men’s Tests since opening in 2018, two of those lost to Covid-era scheduling reshuffles. Consequently, trends are thin on the ground. The India match last November gave us a roller-coaster: brisk movement early, a sleepier middle, then cracks opening late on day three to make batting awkward again. A year earlier Pakistan found the fourth-innings grind almost impossible under a fierce December sun. Starc reckons the strip can be very different from season to season.
“We’ve had five different wickets in the sense,” he said. “We got a pretty slow, flat wicket against the West Indies [in 2022 which went deep into day five].
“The first Test here [in 2018] was one where it cracked up and played a bit like the WACA used to. Last year saw all those wickets on the first day and then it got pretty flat.
“You can look at trends and you can look at what’s happened. In the end you got to play what’s in front of you.”
The elephant in the room is Perth’s weather, or rather the lack of the familiar sun-baked dryness. Spring has been damp, thunderstorms rolled through the metropolitan area earlier this week, and more showers are on the forecast. Local curators are used to looking after a fast, bouncy track, not protecting a fresh drop-in panel from back-to-back downpours.
Even so, head curator Isaac McDonald sees no reason to veer from the usual template. “You look historically at every Test through both venues here in the west, pace and bounce is a mainstay, and that’s not going to change any time soon,” he noted, standing mid-pitch during an early-morning inspection.
McDonald’s team inserted the 11-tonne deck only four weeks ago – tight timing but standard practice for the stadium – and have left extra live grass in an attempt to lock in moisture and preserve hardness. How much of that grass remains come the toss will depend on the forecast in the final forty-eight hours. A dry spell and the mower might come out; another storm and they may hold their nerve.
As ever, visiting batters are trying to predict how much the ball will seam in the first session and whether cracks will widen later on. England’s openers spent most of Tuesday batting on worn net strips to mimic uneven bounce, though they privately admit it is guesswork.
Former Australia captain Kim Hughes, never shy of an opinion on Perth surfaces, believes conditions will lean towards the home quicks but not decisively. “It’ll do a bit early, sure, but if you get through the first hour you can make big runs,” he told local radio yesterday, adding that too much grass can backfire by slowing the pitch down.
Most analysts agree that a sporting surface suits both sides’ strengths and the real unknown is the weather. If the rain stays away, temperatures are tipped to climb into the mid-thirties by day three, which traditionally brings the cracks into play. Equally, another band of showers could leave residual moisture that keeps seamers interested longer.
Either way, the curiosity surrounding Optus Stadium persists. The ground might be only seven years old, but every Test so far has served up a slightly different character. That uncertainty, more than any headline-friendly nickname, is what’s keeping players and spectators guessing as the Ashes caravan finally rolls west.
