Pitch preparation is nothing new, my issue is that a good pitch these days = a batsman's paradise.
England were very ragged, put down a lot of chances and were 70 odd runs short. Ireland were solid and the batting was excellent.
There was a very interesting article in yesterdays Athletic about analytics and how Clubs use them.
Most Clubs subscribe to one of the main data gathering sites like Prozone, Qlickview or Scout7 and then use a developer to modify it to suit their needs.
Chelsea were the subject matter for most of the article; they use the Qlikview package which has then been modified by Microsoft.
The data comes from the Catapult sensors worn by the players which resemble Sports Bra's; the information is transmitted to the data gathering equipment and then displayed on lap tops and at Chelsea's training ground canteen on large TV screens so that the players can view their own data.
They also capture data from GPS sensors in the players boots.
The main points of interest are amount of distance covered, acceleration and deceleration rates, number of sprints at maximum speed and a thing called VC Load which measures how much force you are putting through your body.
The higher the VC Load the more susceptible the players are to injury; this information is then used to modify each players individual training programme.
All of the players, at all levels of the club, get a weekly video showing clips of the good and bad and all of the performance data.
There was an interesting remark about Liverpool who have just had to pay Manchester City 1m in compensation after three members of the Liverpool coaching team had been caught hacking into City's system.