New Zealand Produces the Best Cricket Pitches in the World

By James Rodbourn

With an aging team and some ordinary recent results, New Zealand test cricket fans could be forgiven for clutching at some straws while looking for positives. Well here’s one of those straws: according to the ICC’s own pitch ratings system, New Zealand produces the best cricket pitches in world cricket.

Disclaimer before we go further: I wasn’t specifically looking for a New Zealand angle when I first started digging into these ratings, but as we’ll see below, New Zealand’s propensity for perfect pitch preparation rapidly stood out regardless.

After every test match, the match referee assigns the pitch a rating based on multiple factors, including the consistency of bounce, seam movement (or lack thereof), spin (or lack thereof), and probably most importantly, whether the pitch skewed too far in favour of one discipline, be that batting or bowling. The pitch can be rated Very Good, Good, Average, Below Average, Poor or Unfit*.

The ratings system isn’t perfect. It’s (usually) the opinion of one referee, can be inconsistently applied based on intangible factors, and can be subject to appeal from national cricket boards, some of whom shall we say, hold more sway than others.

But we won’t dwell on that here, especially because New Zealand pitches come out looking so rosy…

Using pitch ratings for 169 tests from July 2019 until the end of November 2023**, we can see how often pitches are assigned each rating, and which countries consistently produce quality pitches. In the table below, it can be seen that the large majority (94.7%) of pitches are assigned at least an ‘Average’ rating. This is important because only Below Average and Poor pitches are subject to ICC sanctions involving demerit points and, if the ground is a repeat offender, the possibility of temporary international bans for that ground.

By then assigning a simple points system (-1 for Poor, 0 for Below Average, 1 for Average, 2 for Good and 3 for Very Good), we can give every test host country an average score which reflects the pitches they produce:

New Zealand pitch curators take a bow. Of the 16 tests hosted by New Zealand, 12 pitches were rated Very Good, 3 Good and just 1 was rated Average (a rare disappointing pitch by the high Basin Reserve standards, for the second test against Sri Lanka earlier this year). The gap in average pitch score between New Zealand and second on the list (England), is almost exactly the same as the gap between England and the bottom of the list (Pakistan). Considering the maximum possible score is 3.00 (if every pitch was rated Very Good), 2.69 is pretty handy.

At the least, the above is more fodder (and facts) for the ongoing ‘culture war’ over pitches in various parts of the cricket world. India in particular has been the subject of the lion’s share of scrutiny when it comes to pitch preparation in recent years.*** The common assertion from many subcontinent pundits and supporters is that rather than their pitches often being below or barely reaching test match standard, they are simply spinning versions of the pitches found in non-subcontinent test nations such as New Zealand, Australia and England, which tend to favour pace bowling. Based on the above ratings, it would appear that assertion is not supported by the ICC or their match referees.

In any case, from a New Zealand perspective the test match pitches produced in Aotearoa are currently without peer.

*Unfit is only used when the pitch is deemed literally dangerous to play on. There hasn’t been an instance of an Unfit pitch during the time period in question.

**Plus the controversial pitch from the recent second test between Bangladesh and New Zealand, which has confusingly been labelled ‘Unsatisfactory’ by the ICC rather than any of the ratings mentioned above. I’m assuming they meant Below Average, as it was assigned 1 demerit point, which is the amount of demerit points a Below Average pitch usually receives.

***The one Poor pitch in this time period was from the 3^rd test between India and Australia in March 2023, in Indore. A match which somewhat ironically, Australia won: 

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