Cricket world slams ‘absolute joke’ as Mackenzie Harvey takes freakish catch

Perth Scorchers coach Adam Voges has hammered the state of Marvel Stadium after his team lost by two wickets to the Melbourne Renegades on Monday night. In a game that had it all from spectacular catches to incredible bowling and six-hitting mastery by Cooper Connelly, it was the sorry state of the pitch that stole the headlines.

Speaking after the game Voges labelled the pitch “substandard” and said after his side lost the bat flip from there he knew it would be tough to get the win on the “poor” ground. “Maybe the wicket dries out a bit, the roller goes on it, but clearly the wicket played differently in the second innings to what it did in the first,” Voges said.

“It’s a shame the bat flip had such an influence in the game but clearly it did in this fixture. I am not making excuses for the result but it was clearly a good bat flip to win. Clearly the outfield is substandard, the aesthetics of it is poor. I will have to check with the players as to how they felt running around on it. We rocked up and saw that … it is what it is, but when you combine that with the wicket, it’s been a tough night.”

While it took just six overs for former Australian wicketkeeper Brad Haddin to see a lack of trust in the surface from the players. “One of the most important things in the field is being able to trust your feet and I think there’s a couple of spots on this field where you can’t trust your feet,” he said on Fox Cricket.

Amid the backlash Cricket Australia released a statement during the match saying: “The League and clubs work closely with all venues to ensure they meet all required standards, including outfields,” Cricket Australia said.

“There are many tenants and events at Marvel Stadium, with extensive foot traffic over the outfield in the period immediately prior to the BBL. As is standard procedure, match officials inspected the venue on Sunday. While there are bare patches on the outfield, it was deemed safe for play. Both teams also trained at the venue on Sunday. We anticipate the outfield will continue to improve ahead of the remaining BBL14 matches at the venue.”

Voges said the Scorchers raised their concerns about the ground ahead of the match but said they were okay to play on it after the BBL deemed it safe. “It’s hard to get anything done at short notice, we expressed our concerns before the game,” he said. “Ultimately we were always ok to play the game if the BBL had decided the ground was fit for play.”

But not everyone was buying that it was good enough, with the cricket world saying the pitch wasn’t good enough for local cricketers to play on. “This surface at Marvel Stadium is totally unacceptable for local cricket. And they’re trying to play professional cricket on it,” commentator Adam White said. And his viewpoint was widely shared amongst the cricket community.

Mackenzie Harvey takes one of the catches of the year

Away from the dismal pitch, the match saw one of the most incredible fielding performances by Renegades livewire Harvey. Not only did he pull off one of the catches of the year on the patchy surface, leaping backwards to take an incredible one-handed grab at midwicket to dismiss the dangerous Matthew Spoors.

But he saved several boundaries and some sharp fielding at cover saw him run out opener Keaton Jennings. In the end, Harvey’s heroics in the field helped lead the Renegades to a crucial win over the Scorchers. The victory saw them improve to 2-1 while the Scorchers dropped to 1-2 after successive losses.