Pitch Tales

A match finishing in 5 sessions, when was the last time you heard that!!!! but that's exactly what happened in the 3rd test match between India and England held at the brand new Narendra Modi stadium in Motera. England got bowled out of for 112 in the first innings after which India retaliated with a marginally better performance of 145 in the second, a similarity between both these innings was that these two teams collapsed from a position of strength where wickets started falling in heaps suddenly. Finally in the second innings England got rolled over by the duo of AXARCHANDRAN for 81 and India knocked off the target of 49 with ease. Virat kohli in his post match conference said that all the batsmen did not apply themselves whereas Joe root was of the view that the pitch had a role to play. Now both of them are correct to an extent but whose view is the stronger reason for such a dismal test match, our King Kohli or the noble Yorkshire man?

I will side with Root here and there are a couple of reasons for it. First and foremost if an international match involving two such high class teams is getting over in two days there has to be something wrong with the pitch, it is not possible for both the teams to fail so inexplicably unless other factors are at play. Now some people might argue that international matches have ended previously also in a much shorter time, however the last time a match ended before this was in 1912 at the Oval when England faced South Africa when the whole game of cricket was new and even international teams relatively inexperienced unlike nowadays where teams have so much exposure.

The second and the most talked about argument is that if a ball can swing and seam on the first day of a test match, why can't it spin and in addition to that the 21 wickets out of the 30 were on straight deliveries. To answer the first argument, the basic characteristic of a Seaming pitch is that it’s helpful for the bowlers on the first and second day but as the match goes on, it becomes easier for batting. Hence if the batsmen are able to ride the tide in the first couple of days it becomes better which evens things out. However a pitch which assists spinners is supposed to turn on the fourth and fifth day, not the first. Hence if the ball starts turning from the first day it becomes an absolute minefield for the batsmen where there is very little chance of creating an impact.

Coming to the second argument, what people do not notice is that the balls which did not take wickets turned and bounced quite inexplicably on the first day which made the straighter ball the wicket taking ones. For a pitch to be deemed unfit the deliveries don't have to necessarily take wickets, case in point is the match between India and South Africa in 2018 at the Wanderers, the pitch was deemed to be unfit by the match referee Andy Pycroft because there was excessively steep and unpredictable bounce, these balls with excessive bounce didn't necessarily take wickets but behaved in an abnormal way which caused the pitch to be deemed unfit. Even during the second test match in Chennai the ball was absolutely exploding after pitching, which is absolutely unacceptable. However because the Indian batsmen put up a good show, there cannot be any possible criticism because the end Justifies the means even though it should not sometimes. However In this Motera Test match where except a certain Rohit Sharma every batsman faltered and a part time spinner got a wicket in every over he bowled, there is no way to justify this pitch and I strongly believe it should be deemed unfit as this would just lead to the production of more rank turners and absolute green tops which is not fruitful for the future of Test Cricket.