Bowling first on a dry pitch is not madness

The instinct to bat first on a turner is a hundred years old and it costs teams matches they could win.

Bat first. It is practically a reflex on any surface that looks dry, and the reasoning gets repeated so often that nobody checks it: the pitch will only deteriorate, so take your runs while they are available and bowl at them on day four.

Reasonable. Also frequently wrong, and the reason is that a dry pitch does not deteriorate on a smooth curve.

What actually happens on a lot of dry subcontinental surfaces is that the first session has more in it for the bowlers than the following two days. The top is still bound together, there is enough moisture underneath to hold seam movement for an hour, and the odd ball grips and jumps because the surface has not yet been rolled flat by a hundred overs of traffic. Then it settles. By the middle of day two the ball is soft, the pitch is slow, and scoring is at its easiest. Only on the third afternoon does the footmark rough become genuinely dangerous.

If that is the shape, batting first means volunteering to bat in the hardest hour and then handing the easiest phase to the opposition. Bowl first, get four or five in the opening session, and you have bought yourself a first innings on the flattest version of the pitch and the last innings on the worst. That last part is the price, and it is the reason nobody does it. Chasing 180 on a fourth day turner is horrible.

But the price is only worth paying attention to if you are likely to be chasing at all. If your attack can bowl a side out for 200 in the first innings, the fourth innings target is not the one people fear when they refuse.

There is also a squad question. Sides that insert on a turner need a spinner who is a genuine new ball option, not somebody brought on in the twentieth over once the shine has gone. A left-arm orthodox operating in the first hour with a hard ball and a slip and a short leg is an attacking proposition. Very few captains use it because it looks eccentric and losing looks worse when you did something eccentric.

That is the real reason batting first survives. Not evidence. Blame avoidance. Nobody has ever been sacked for the conventional call.