GROS ISLET (St Lucia), March 13: Just about the one thing captains at the World Cup seem to be agreed on is that pitches will generally be slow and assist spin bowlers.

Last week both England skipper Michael Vaughan and Australia captain Ricky Ponting talked up the tournament prospects of their frontline left-arm spinners, Monty Panesar and Brad Hogg respectively.

England are now in St Lucia, where they begin their World Cup programme proper against fellow Group C giants New Zealand at the island's Beausejour ground on Friday.

And according to groundsman Kent Crafton, who has been at Beausejour since the venue opened five years ago, the teams here can look forward to good one-day cricket wickets rather than slow turners.

“One thing we've tried to do is put more compaction into the clay (the base layer of the pitch) to increase the pace and bounce,” Crafton said.

“That will aid in the ball probably coming in with some more pace, not expressly, but just a little bit more than normal, which will aid in more runs being scored.

“It will be good wicket, I would not say it will be an exceptionally fast pitch but the ball will come off nicely. We've had very good opening partnerships here.”

Another concern is that, with many World Cup matches set to be played on recently re-laid pitches, batting will get harder as the match progresses.

However, research carried out by Britain's Sunday Times has said that most games in the Caribbean are won by the team batting second.

Crafton does not believe that the toss will be significant in St Lucia.

“The wicket will not change much from during the morning until the afternoon. I don't believe the toss will matter so much. If it's cloudy, maybe you'd want to bowl first.”

The average ODI’s score in 16 innings at Beausejour is 244 with Pakistan's 303 for six against West Indies on May 22, 2005 the highest.—AFP