Australia legend Glenn McGrath has suggested England’s attacking batters may struggle down under for one very simple reason: the grounds are much bigger out there.
McGrath, writing in his BBC Sport column, said: “How will England play Bazball on the big Australian grounds? English grounds are smaller.
“If you’re going to try to hit sixes in Australia, make sure you hit them a long way, otherwise you’ll be caught.”
Does he have a point? BBC Sport, working with CricViz, has crunched the numbers to find out…
First of all, the grounds in Australia are much bigger. For example, the smallest in Australia (Sydney Cricket Ground) is still almost 2000m² larger than the biggest in England (Old Trafford).
It won’t surprise anyone to know the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) is the biggest of all Australia’s huge grounds, with a surface area of 18736m², ahead of the Gabba (18405m²).
In layman’s terms, a batter must hit it further to get a six while the vast open spaces often mean more opportunities for runs.
So, while the average number of runs scored by six hits is 5% in Australia and 5.2% in England (since 2020), at Melbourne that figures drops to 3.3%.
But does that translate to more twos and threes as fielders chase leather? Yes, it does: 16.1% of scoring shots are twos here, with only Sydney (16.2%) and, interestingly, Old Trafford (16.9%) having a higher percentage of the usual Test grounds here and down under.