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Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) pitch curator Adam Lewis expressed his confidence that the pitch will be different from the one that was prepared for New South Wales and Tasmania.
The Sydney pitch received a lot of criticism for the Sheffield Shield match as a total of 24 wickets went down on the third day as Tasmania were bowled out for a paltry score of 68. The 24 wickets that fell came in across just 63 overs. Batter found it hard to deal with the seam as well as the uneven bounce that the pitch offered. Lewis admitted that he took the criticism to heart and is hopeful that the pitch won't turn out the same way for the final Test clash between Australia and Pakistan. "We take (criticism) to heart, because we put so much time and effort into it. We want to produce something that's good for both the batter and the bowler. When it gets taken out of our hands, it's hard. Hopefully, we won't be in that situation. We learnt from it, and we know what to do differently next time," Lewis said as quoted from cricket.com.au. With rain on the cards in the coming days and unpredictable storms have kept the curators on their guard. SCG holds the reputation for Australia's best turning surface and the weather could intervene from happening that. "It's a pitch that gets its reputation from deterioration, with hopefully heat and baking sun exposing that unique clay that helps spin," Cricket Australia's operations chief Peter Roach told cricket.com.au. "If there's no baking sun because it's sitting under covers, or there is cloud cover throughout the match, it won't deteriorate as quickly and won't spin as much. We don't want Sydney to look like Perth or anywhere else in Australia, because I think everyone loves seeing it spin. That's a unique feature of the SCG," Roach said. "For this Test series we've seen a match at the venue with the fastest pitch in the world (in Perth), and it's going to finish with historically Australia's best spinning pitch. So in a shortened series, we will hopefully see all the extremes, and we want that from Sydney, but they unfortunately haven't had that perfect opportunity to produce it in recent times." Roach added. Australia gained an unassailable lead following their second consecutive victory in a three-match Test series. Pakistan will look to conclude the series on a high note as they face the hosts in the final match on Wednesday. (ANI)
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