Nobody prepares the outfield and it changes the score more than you think

Twenty two yards get obsessive attention while the several acres surrounding them are cut to whatever the mower was set to.

We spend a fortnight discussing the strip and roughly nine seconds discussing the ninety percent of the ground the ball actually travels across.

The outfield decides how many of a batter's well timed shots reach the rope. A quick, closely mown, firm outfield turns a checked drive into four. A slow one, damp or shaggy or laid on soft sand, turns the same shot into two and a tired fielder. Over an innings that difference is worth more than most of the things we do discuss, and unlike the pitch it affects both sides in exactly the same way, which is presumably why nobody complains about it.

It also changes fielding, which is where the effect gets interesting. On a true outfield a fielder can attack the ball, because it comes to him predictably and the bounce is reliable. On a patchy one he has to wait, which costs a metre, which costs a single, which over fifty overs is a meaningful total. And a wet outfield changes the ball, soaking the rough side and cancelling reverse swing for an entire session, which is a bowling change disguised as groundskeeping.

Grounds that host several sports have the worst of it, since the outfield is a compromise between codes with different requirements and the cricket use is usually the junior partner. I have watched top level matches on outfields with visible seams where a football pitch had been relaid, and heard the resulting misfields described as poor technique.

Here is my actual complaint. Pitch reports are a fixed ritual, complete with a key poked into the surface, and they almost never mention the outfield. A visiting captain making decisions about batting order and boundary options is working with information about twenty two yards and guesswork about the rest.

Walk the ground. Look at the direction of the mowing, feel whether it gives underfoot, check the last ten metres before the rope where drainage usually collects. That is five minutes of work and it tells you whether your bottom hand hitter is worth playing today.

Nobody does it, because there is no camera on the outfield at nine in the morning and no pundit has ever been asked about it.