Don’t judge MCG pitch by its grass cover: Harris

MELBOURNE: No-one has spent more time batting on the MCG’s hotly-debated pitches this season than Marcus Harris, and he has counselled his team-mates not to judge the surface by the expected preponderance of green grass geared towards ensuring a result after last year’s bore draw during the Ashes series.

Harris got the fright of his life when he saw the pitch for the Sheffield Shield match, admitting now that he expected the game between Victoria and New South Wales to be over in “a day and a half”, before proceeding to sculpt a monumental 250 not out that played a major role in vaulting him into the Test team.

As a result, Harris is expecting slow scoring but the opportunity for runs to be made by batsmen diligent enough to play within their lanes.

“Pre-match when I saw the wicket I was really freaked out and I thought ‘this game’s going to be over in a day and a half and we’ve got blokes trying to vie for Test spots’, so I went into the game with no expectations on myself and the wicket actually played pretty well,” Harris told ESPNcricinfo. “It was relatively slow and stayed together.

“I saw this morning the wicket will probably be more similar to the South Australia game, where it had a bit more green grass on it, nipped around a bit but it was one of those wickets where if you play well you can make runs but if you bowl well you can take wickets.

“I think it’ll be the same old thing of patience.”Meanwhile, Mitchell Starc is hopeful of something a little more equitable this time around. With typical bluntness, he assessed last summer’s Test pitch (“shocking”) and the ICC’s average rating for the Perth Stadium flier (“harsh”).

“There has been plenty of traction in the public from past players at their disappointment of that rating,” Starc said.“You had a fantastic Test match over five days, a fantastic battle between ball and bat which is what you want. I think that was a bit harsh.

“Test cricket isn’t meant to be comfortable.”“It sounds like it will be similar to one of the Shield games few weeks ago so the likelihood is it will do more than last year, which is great.”