Pakistan vs England, 1st Test, Rawalpindi

“It’s embarrassing for us, especially when you have a cricketer as the chairman,” said Ramiz, speaking to the media during the lunch break on the second day of the Test. “This is not a good advertisement for cricket. We are a better cricketing nation than this.”

The quality of Test match pitches has become a point of intense scrutiny, in fact since the day Ramiz took over as chairman last year when he promised to bring drop-in pitches to Pakistan. Although such talks have continued apace over the past 15 months, concrete progress on the subject has been non-existent, and Ramiz dismisses the cost of having them sent from abroad as prohibitive.

“Ultimately, the only situation is a drop-in space. Which is extremely expensive if we take it from abroad. Instead, we develop land here for drop-in spaces. That way we can prepare square turners or bounce wickets depending on what we want.

“This is not a question of not leaving grass on the pitch. The grass looks good from an optical point of view. We have to create bounce, which can happen without grass, which happens on Australian pitches. They don’t leave a lot of grass on the pitch. We gets different tracks in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

“We have the same pitches because we get the same type of soil. We have tried to bring in a creator from abroad; we needed to bring a curator from Australia for the Lahore Test, because the situation had gone out of control. When I want a spin pitch, we don’t get that either, so it ends up being half and half. We don’t want that.”

While Ramiz suggested there were structural issues undermining the pitch’s preparation in Pakistan, there had been relatively little controversy about the quality of the surfaces for the Test series until Australia’s visit to Rawalpindi in March. The pitch for that match produced 14 wickets in five days and was awarded a poor rating and docked a demerit point by the ICC.

Eighteen of South Africa’s 20 wickets fell to Pakistani bowlers, an advantage Ramiz acknowledged Pakistan needed to exploit. Even the surface in Karachi at the time provided an absorbing contest, with Pakistan triumphing by seven wickets on the final day.

Ramiz’s repeated talk of overhauling pitches in Pakistan has led to criticism that the PCB chairman is micromanaging their preparations. That speculation isn’t entirely unwarranted either, with Ramiz flying in Toby Lumsden, a former curator at the MCG, to help resurface Gaddafi Stadium ahead of the third Test against Australia.

However, Ramiz insisted that he did not interfere in the preparation of individual Test match places. “The board doesn’t control how pitches are made. I’ve left that to the think tank. We look at our strengths and then the pitch and then make choices. I try to limit my involvement because otherwise I can’t hold people accountable. For accountability you have to give up control .I aim to create a pitch that ends up defining our tactics, so that a template is set.

“We are living in the dark age of pitches in Pakistan. They are not exposed in T20 and 50 overs, but they are in Test cricket. We were living in an apartheid situation where the teams did not come here. Pakistani players had played 70 Tests without a player here. It is an achievement that we managed to stay afloat. We’ve tried everything, brought in a curator from abroad. Pitches are the lifeblood of cricket in a country, but having said that, I’ve never seen batting like England’s on Day 1 either .”

However, Ramiz warned that there would be little immediate improvement in that situation. “This will improve by next season. Unfortunately we will see the same pitches for the New Zealand series.”