Is India now the hardest place to play

[neel roy]

Has India now become the hardest place to play in the world. A very good analysis by Jarrod Kimber. He makes a very good point. Runs in India should be celebrated by everyone keeping in mind the pitches as well as the quality of opposition bowlers. Aus has flat pitches now in sydney and adelaide. Oval and Southampton in England. NZ pitches become as flat as pancakes as days progress. Only South Africa still has decent pitches but you do see teams scoring 250/300. In India you cant even score 200 consistently. BD Pitches are flat and you can score in first innings and same goes for Lankan. In Pakistan you can even score in 7th innings of a test. But in India its Game On from ball one..

 

 

 

[Tillu]

 

 

 

 

 

[Nikhil_cric]

Jarrod Kimber generally analyses better than most. You can atleast see the effort.

 

England, SA and Windies are indeed tougher places to bat than even India. But that also depends on the bowling attacks they have at tines so hard to say. 

[Sandeep99]

Facts backed by stats. Good analysis and anyone would agree with it.

[zen]

Hardest place to bat due to “certain factors” designed to give India an unfair advantage (unsporting cricket maybe). 

 

Where bowling averages are low, batting ones tend to be low as well well, therefore, cannot expect batsmen to average high when the pitches are so compromised.

[Texan]

Good analysis. It was quite a revelation to see that we also have the best bowling record away from home. Wow!

 

Now if only we could give some chances to some new batsmen, we could be dominating World cricket the way Aussies used to. 

[nevada]

1 hour ago, zen said:

Hardest place to bat due to “certain factors” designed to give India an unfair advantage (unsporting cricket maybe). 

 

Where bowling averages are low, batting ones tend to be low as well well, therefore, cannot expect batsmen to average high when the pitches are so compromised.

Due to badly declined batting, we are relying on "friendly" pitches. Back in 2016 against England, Kohli scored a double, Karun Nair scored a triple and allrounder Jayant Yadav scored a century. We still won the series. Now, if we had similar pitches, our current batting line-up is incapable of such scores. If the opponent bats first and scores 500-600, we will likely collapse under scoreboard pressure. The pitches in the BGT series in Australia were fair, with equal chance to batsman and bowler. Win or lose, I like to see cricket played on such pitches. 

[sage]

 

 

[Norman]

1 hour ago, zen said:

Hardest place to bat due to “certain factors” designed to give India an unfair advantage (unsporting cricket maybe). 

 

 

Unfair? Unsporting? How? 

 

Are we making the touring teams bat on a turner and then switching to an adjacent flat wicket when we bat? 

 

If making wickets that suit our strengths is "unsporting", then there's not a single sporting team in Test cricket. 

[Tillu]

Win/loss ratio outside SENA in the past 10 years

 

[zen]

46 minutes ago, Norman said:

 

Unfair? Unsporting? How? 

 

Are we making the touring teams bat on a turner and then switching to an adjacent flat wicket when we bat? 

 

If making wickets that suit our strengths is "unsporting", then there's not a single sporting team in Test cricket. 

India is trying to get other team to play a handicap match by tailoring pitches to suit turning pitch specialists, hard to classify them as spinners, to gain an “unfair” advantage. There is no point in playing cricket like this. Such a quest to win by hook or crook could eventually be seen as one of the biggest cheating initiative (which includes even those who try to justify this using logical fallacies/whataboutism) in sports. 
 

Edited February 21, 2023 by zen

[zen]

32 minutes ago, nevada said:

Due to badly declined batting, we are relying on "friendly" pitches. Back in 2016 against England, Kohli scored a double, Karun Nair scored a triple and allrounder Jayant Yadav scored a century. We still won the series. Now, if we had similar pitches, our current batting line-up is incapable of such scores. If the opponent bats first and scores 500-600, we will likely collapse under scoreboard pressure. The pitches in the BGT series in Australia were fair, with equal chance to batsman and bowler. Win or lose, I like to see cricket played on such pitches. 

Yeah, but the first goal is to play sporting cricket as win/losses are a part of the game. If the focus is to win by hook or crook, not much point in playing the game. 
 

And if pitches are going to be unsportingly tilted to suit the turners specialists, the batting automatically becomes challenging so batsmen get a pass too. 

We should be looking to play sporting cricket where India’s pace bowling resources and batsmen come into play more too, developing a well rounded game!

 

[deepdynamo]

There is no fun in cricket if pitches are flat roads like Pakistan.

SL, BD also produces spin wickets like India but they don't win often enough even with that strategy.

So, its a challenge to win in India because of high quality spinners on turners.

 

 

[speedracer]

3 hours ago, zen said:

Yeah, but the first goal is to play sporting cricket as win/losses are a part of the game. If the focus is to win by hook or crook, not much point in playing the game. 
 

And if pitches are going to be unsportingly tilted to suit the turners specialists, the batting automatically becomes challenging so batsmen get a pass too. 

We should be looking to play sporting cricket where India’s pace bowling resources and batsmen come into play more too, developing a well rounded game!

 

Good bounce

Good turn

Good batting strip

 

Mutually exclusive and not possible. 

 

I would prefer a good bowling wicket that helps pacers and spinners. Not ultra spicy though.

[Gollum]

I think I said it a few times before, India in test cricket is like Nadal on clay.

 

Invincible in certain conditions, sure vulnerable in some conditions but can and has tasted success in supposedly "alien conditions", so tough to play the one surface card. India has won more test series in Australia (GOAT cricket nation) in the last 4 years than more than half the test playing nations in their entire test history. Just like how Nadal has more non-clay slams than Agassi, Becker, McEnroe, Connors, Lendl (that too in an era where Federer and Djokovic were part of the competition). Complete domination in a certain set of conditions kind of undermines the level of him (and Team India) in other conditions.

 

One viewpoint may be that some other ATG teams/players are more well rounded, all conditions specialists etc. But at the end of the day raw numbers paint a different picture. I may be a Fedtard, it is 100% true that Nadal has a massive clay skew (accounting for 70% of his titles and solely responsible for favorable H2Hs even in slams) but 22>20. Won't even mention slam H2H as a mark of respect to the great Swiss, but not pretty.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Gollum

[speedracer]

4 minutes ago, Gollum said:

I think I said it a few times before, India in test cricket is like Nadal on clay.

 

Invincible in certain conditions, sure vulnerable in some conditions but can and has tasted success in supposedly "alien conditions", so tough to play the one surface card. India has won more test series in Australia (GOAT cricket nation) in the last 4 years than more than half the test playing nations in their entire test history. Just like how Nadal has more non-clay slams than Agassi, Becker, McEnroe, Connors, Lendl (that too in an era where Federer and Djokovic were part of the competition). Godly domination in a certain set of conditions kind of undermines the level of him (and Team India) in other conditions.

 

One viewpoint may be that some other ATG teams/players are more well rounded, all conditions specialists etc. But at the end of the day raw numbers paint a different picture. I may be a Fedtard, it is 100% true that Nadal has a massive clay skew (accounting for 70% of his titles and solely responsible for favorable H2Hs even in slams) but 22>20. Won't even mention slam H2H as a mark of respect to the great Swiss, but not pretty.

Nadal >>>> fed. 

Not to mention bloody masters titles. It's carnage. 

 

But yea it isn't homogenised surfaces.

[Gollum]

If we win this series, it will be 16 or 17 consecutive series wins at home.

 

Next best is 90s/00s Aus at 10, they achieved it on 2 separate occasions. Lloyd's WI has its record at 8 I think.

 

Our two main rivals in modern era are Aus and Eng. Aus won 11 out of last 12 tosses here, Eng won 8 out of last 10 tosses here, implying they enjoyed best use of conditions. Then why can't our esteemed opponents draw a series here? Forget series, why are our opponents struggling to make India bat twice in India? This despite our batting declining so much against spin, carrying so many passengers etc.

 

[Tillu]

Scuffle broke out between India and Australian fans

 

 

[Gollum]

9 minutes ago, speedracer said:

Nadal >>>> fed. 

Not to mention bloody masters titles. It's carnage. 

 

But yea it isn't homogenised surfaces.

Again Masters has a clay skew. 

Clay has 3 masters 1000 tourneys (Monte Carlo, Madrid, Rome), grass none. Not to overlook how most of the HCs too play like in this era, look at the court pace indices. 

 

Nadal also benefitted most with racquet change technology, no way he is getting the same top spin with 90s strings. Too many things in his favor, unlike Fed/Nole he won't do well if transported to another era. So what?

Edited February 21, 2023 by Gollum

[Norman]

5 hours ago, zen said:

India is trying to get other team to play a handicap match by tailoring pitches to suit turning pitch specialists, hard to classify them as spinners, to gain an “unfair” advantage. There is no point in playing cricket like this. Such a quest to win by hook or crook could eventually be seen as one of the biggest cheating initiative (which includes even those who try to justify this using logical fallacies/whataboutism) in sports. 
 

 

 

You still haven't explained how it's "unfair" to anyone and how it can termed as cheating? 

 

South Africa prepared some of the most seam friendly wickets you'll ever see the last two times we were there, and so did England most of the times. Are they being unfair and is that too "cheating"? Sri Lanka , Bangladesh prepare rank turners too more often than not... why do their spinners never look as good then?