Head wants more bowler-friendly wickets this Ashes series saying he enjoys the greener pitches more than flatter ones.
Why Head hopes Ashes pitches continue to help the bowlers.
Travis Head is hoping for seam-friendly pitches in the Ashes, saying he prefers batting on them to flatter ones because he thinks there are more scoring opportunities.
Given that Test surfaces in Australia have shifted significantly in favour of seam bowlers over the last four summers in comparison to previous decades, the pitches that will be used in the Ashes are a key topic of discussion.
Head scored incredible hundreds on difficult fields in Brisbane and Hobart to win the 2021–22 Ashes player of the series award. This summer, he hopes for more of the same.
“I probably enjoy batting on those sort of wickets,” Head told. “The flatter wickets, with the grind, that more so challenge technique, I think, over longer periods of time [trying] to eke out runs has never probably come as natural to me with being a stroke player and wanting to get on with it. And the slower, flat wickets probably don’t tend to that. But fast-paced pitches that nip, you can maybe get away with a few things.
“And then obviously the way I want to play is if they present opportunities to score, you score. So when they’re greener, they pitch up a little bit more and a bit fuller, and the style that I play, if they miss a little bit, I’m able to hopefully score and get busy.
“It’s a run based game. You see some of the great players, like Steve Smith, Joe Root, you blink and they’re on 30 or 40. And that’s something that I’ve always appreciated, and definitely [on] these wickets, you know that you potentially have got one with your name on it. You can still play well. You can still get runs. Sometimes you’ve got that go about it in different ways. But ultimately, it’s a game where you go try and score as many as you can.”
The top seven hitters in Australia have amassed 24 hundreds in 20 Test matches since the 2021–22 Ashes began, averaging just 30.22 per dismissal. The top seven batters averaged 38.14 over 20 Test matches with 34 centuries in the four summers prior, from the beginning of the 2017–18 Ashes to the conclusion of the 2020–21 Border–Gavaskar series.
Other Australian batsmen have recently been neutralised at home, despite Head’s success. After averaging 63.20 in Australia throughout the first ten years of his career, Steven Smith has averaged 45.26 during the previous four home summers with four hundreds.
If Australia’s pitches continue to be spicy for the forthcoming Ashes, he thinks England’s hitters would have a difficult time.
“England play pretty well on the flatter wickets, the way they play,” Smith said. “So, if there’s a bit in it like there has been the last three or four years, with our bowling attack, it certainly makes things a lot more difficult for their batters.”