Pakistan Cricket Board’s chairman Ramiz Raja has termed the pitch at Rawalpindi hosting the first test match between Pakistan and England as “embarrassing”.
His comments come in the wake of England’s record-breaking total of 506 runs on the very first day before the visitors amassed 657 runs in total before being dismissed.
Pakistan used the lifeless track to get to 181/0 before the close of play on day 2 as well.
“It is embarrassing for us, especially when you have a cricketer as chairman,” Raja was quoted as saying while talking to the media during the lunch break on the second day of the Test.
“This is not a good advert for cricket. We’re a better cricketing nation than this.”
The pitch at Rawalpindi has already made a name for itself for all the wrong reasons after the run-fest earlier in the year between Pakistan and Australia with Ramiz Raja floating the idea of drop-in pitches after the debacle.
The board also tried to fix the issue by seeking help from MCG’s ex-curator Toby Lumsden but that did not pan out as expected.
“We have the same pitches because we get the same kind of soil. We’ve tried to bring a curator from abroad; we needed to bring a curator from Australia for the Lahore Test because the situation had got out of hand. When I want a spinning pitch, we don’t get that either, so it ends up being half and half. We don’t want that.”
Ramiz then concluded his session with another stark reminder that there is no quick fix in sight for the problem which could linger on for another year.
“This will improve by next season. Unfortunately, we’ll see the same kinds of pitches for the New Zealand series.”
