Let’s start with the insanity of the white-ball formats. In Rawalpindi, England posted 429/4, powered by Harry Brook’s 202 off 116 balls. In response, Sri Lanka achieved the impossible, chasing down 430 with a ball to spare. The match aggregate was a staggering 859 runs. Just 24 hours prior, in Christchurch, India and New Zealand combined for 455 runs in a T20I, with India chasing down 226.

Why is this happening? The answer lies in a combination of factors:

It has become a game of survival for the bowlers. When a bowler like a prime Jasprit Bumrah or Mitchell Starc goes for over 10 runs an over, you know the rules of the game have fundamentally changed. It is no longer bat vs ball; it is bat vs boundary ropes.

Now, shift your gaze from the subcontinent-like flat decks of Rawalpindi to the green, seaming top in Gqeberha, South Africa. Here, the script flipped entirely. Australia, the World Test Champions, were bowled out for a paltry 99 in their first innings.

Marco Jansen (5/33) and Kagiso Rabada produced a masterclass in seam and swing bowling, exploiting the conditions perfectly. Australia’s batters, so dominant on flat decks, looked completely at sea against the moving ball. They were forced to follow-on, and by stumps on Day 4, they were staring down the barrel at 156/4, still trailing by 170 runs.

Test cricket remains the ultimate test of technique. On a spicy pitch, with the red ball darting around, the flaws in modern batting techniques are brutally exposed. The hyper-aggressive approach that works in T20Is often leads to a fast collapse in Test cricket.

Former cricketers and experts have been vocal about the quality of pitches. The ICC’s desire for high-scoring, entertaining white-ball matches has led to the creation of absolute highways. The bowler has become a mere conveyor belt, while the batter is the star of the show.

On the flip side, in Test cricket, we see an over-correction. Pitches like the one in Gqeberha offer extreme seam movement, making the game a lottery for the batters. There is no middle ground. Either it is a batting paradise where 400 is par, or it is a bowling graveyard where 100 is a winning total.

Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar recently said, “A good cricket pitch is one where a batter has to work hard for runs, and a bowler gets rewards for good deliveries. We are losing that balance.”