Australia vs Bangladesh: Two-day Mackay Test pitch set for highest possible ‘very good’ rating originally appeared on Cricket News. Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:- Match referee Sir Richie Richardson is set to grade the Mackay pitch "very good".
- That is the highest possible rating available under the ICC's pitch guidelines.
- Australia beat Bangladesh by an innings and 51 runs inside two days.
A Test that lasted just 750 deliveries would normally guarantee a curator a difficult conversation, but the Mackay surface appears set to escape censure entirely. Reports indicate the pitch that produced 30 wickets in 125 overs will receive the best rating the ICC has to offer.
According to 7 Sports journalist Tom Morris, match referee Sir Richie Richardson is set to grade the Great Barrier Reef Arena pitch as "very good", the highest possible grading. The ICC will need to sign off on the assessment before it is formalised.
Match referee for the Mackay Test Sir Richie Richardson is set to grade the pitch ‘very good’…The highest possible grading.
The ICC will need to tick it off before the grading is formalised.
30 wickets fell in 125 overs…a wicket every 25 balls. 🏏@7Cricket@1116sen…
Australia won the second Test by an innings and 51 runs to level the series, bowling Bangladesh out for 64 and 95 either side of their own modest 210. Mitchell Starc took 10 for 51 across the match, including 6 for 12 in the first innings.
It was Mackay's debut as a Test venue, and the match now ranks as the fourth-shortest completed men's Test in history. Only 369 runs were scored across the entire contest.
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Why the Mackay pitch is set for a 'very good' ratingThe central argument in the surface's favour is the balance it struck. A wicket fell every 25 deliveries, but the assistance on offer was conventional seam movement and bounce rather than the unpredictable, dangerous variation that typically triggers a poor rating.
Recent precedent supports the decision. The Perth pitch that opened the 2025-26 Ashes also produced a two-day finish and was rated "very good", whereas the Gabba surface of 2022 and the MCG pitch of 2025 were both marked down because of the manner in which they misbehaved rather than simply how quickly the matches ended.
Starc, who has bowled on Australian surfaces for more than a decade, was unequivocal in his defence of the strip. "People will see 18 wickets and say it's a bad wicket. I think it's a very good day for one wicket," he said after the opening day.
He went on to compare it to one of Australia's most respected venues. "It's probably played very similar to a Gabba wicket. You see some tennis-ball bounce early on day one at the Gabba, like today. A pretty helter-skelter day of cricket, but I'd say some good bowling led to 18 wickets," Starc added.
Nathan Lyon, who faced 62 balls in the match, offered similar backing, telling Kayo Sports he thought the pitch was brilliant.
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Why the surface may not have been to blame for the two-day finishThe strongest evidence that batting standards were the greater issue lies in the manner of the dismissals and the disparity in application. Lyon, a number 10, faced more deliveries than most of the specialist batters on either side, which is rarely the mark of an unplayable pitch.
Australia's own performance underlines the point. Their total of 210 is the lowest to produce an innings victory in 80 years and the fourth-lowest in Test history, meaning the winning side batted poorly and still won by a substantial margin. On a genuinely treacherous surface, that gap would not have opened up.
Starc's own explanation of the conditions also pointed to natural variation rather than danger, noting that the ball swung throughout the day because of the square rather than moving unpredictably off the seam. Sideways movement decreased as the hardness of the ball wore off, which is the expected behaviour of a good Test pitch rather than a poor one.
Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto offered a more measured counterpoint, saying the surface was quite difficult to bat on. Notably, though, he stopped well short of calling it unfit or dangerous.
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Why the rating will still divide opinionThe broader concern for Cricket Australia is the pattern rather than this individual match. Between 1945 and 2022, Australia hosted just one two-day Test. Since December 2022, they have staged four, and awarding top marks to a pitch that produced the fourth-shortest Test in history invites the question of what a surface would need to do to be marked down.
There is also a reasonable suspicion, voiced by some observers, that the strip was deliberately prepared to suit Australia's pace attack after the shock defeat in Darwin. That is difficult to prove and equally difficult to dismiss, and it is not something a pitch rating is designed to assess.
On balance, Richardson's expected verdict looks defensible. The evidence points to a hard, quick surface offering conventional assistance, exposed by two batting line-ups short on technique and patience.
But the more Tests that finish in two days on pitches rated "very good", the harder it becomes for the ICC to argue that its grading system is measuring anything meaningful about the contest between bat and ball.
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