Are placid pitches to blame as India run Sri Lanka ragged? : Dileep Premachandran

[cowboysfan]

this is not a gripe thread but we seem to be getting the pitches wrong in India recently.With the Aussies we did the worst thing possible in preparing patta wickets knowing too well that their batsmen can out hit ours on most days and effectively taking our spinners out of our equation(our only trump card). now we have another pitch which favors the batsmen heavily when we could have left some grass on the wicket and exploited the conditions but that was not the case.I will take our batsmen over their FTBs on a seamer friendly wicket.Imo the best way to win a test match against sri-lanka is to have a pitch which has something in it for both fast bowlers and spinners and trust our experienced batsmen to play more responsibly and outbat theirs.I just think we cant win against this very good sri-lankan team on pitches which actually favor them.

[Septimius Severus]

Agreed, green seamers ala H'dingley.not this bore a thon batting decks

[The Outsider]

The problem is it's impossible to prepare green wickets without heavily favoring one side in India. The grass dries out in a couple of sessions and after that the wicket becomes a paradise for batting much like in the match against South Africa at Ahmedabad. That is not to say preparing good sporting wickets is not possible - last season was really good in that respect. Except for the Delhi pitch, all tests against Australia and England were played on sporting wickets - good carry, reasonable cracking up, conditions for reverse swing etc.

[cowboysfan]

i feel we are doing a disservice to our bowlers by preparing these patta wickets.Very rarely do we win test matches by overwhelming batting superiority and just grinding out the other team by posting huge scores.our bowlers are not that good.

[kabira]

I don't understand when Curator comes out with this statement "This pitch is sporting and will have something for bowlers and product result" Its better to prepare a pitch that is bit quicker and has bounce. Wankhede is an example to follow

[falconiced]

it's difficult to produce a pitch to defeat Lankans... can't produce a turning track, simply because their spinners are better than ours.. green track is difficult, our batsmen are not so great against the swinging ball either... :blink:

[karteekmvs]

If the pitch starts taking some turn on the final day, as is predicted, this could very well be a big win for the Lankans. I guess we could have an exciting final day. Lets just hope so.

[gaurav92]

What kind of a pitch is ideal for a test match? We have seen pitches in India, flat "paata" and in pakistan very flat too.Even in a country of fast bowlers West indies, the track has flatten out and we hardly find any swing from the old ball(except reversing). So my question is what kind of a pitch is ideal for a test match, to guarantee a result? My pick would be A wicket with a good live grass(green grass), a bit green wicket with a fair amount of moisture, to assist fast bowlers in the first session of the opening day.Then when the sun is out, the pitch will bake out and flatten up, this would provide good track for the batsmen.Then say on day 3 the pitch should break up and help the spinners, to award fair amount of turn and bounce.So in the end, we have a dead turner on day 5 which almost assure a result. What do you reckon?

[kabira]

MOM: Dheeraj Parsana Well Done. Thanks for the Entertainment

[gaurav92]

We wanted result, not a run feast so well done for only entertainment but no satisfaction :((

[The Dark Horse]

Who is he? The curator?

[Sachinism]

Who is he? The curator?

The curator needs to be smacked up

[Fontaine]

No, the curator is Bagira Thakur. He's the real man of the match as he had the biggest influence on the result!!

[cowboysfan]

without some meaningful contribution from bhajii we are doomed .i hope kanpur has something in it for the spinners .

[Fontaine]

It's the easiest damn thing to do. Ship in Australian/South African soil and dig up all the granite, rock hard decks. Prepare more grassy wickets and I guarantee you within 4 years we'll have proper domestic batsmen who'll know how to bat anywhere in the world and an army of fast bowlers who'll be great at getting swing/seam movement. Not just international home matches but domestic competitions would be thrilling as the first part of the match it would suit the bowlers and in the latter half when the grass dies out it'll suit the batsmen who'll now have to negotiate spin. Who cares about spin anyway? It's not like India is brimming over with fantastic spin bowlers. If the best we can do is have someone like Bhajji who's more of a dart thrower then there's no point preparing pitches just for spin. Spin will always play an important part but it shouldn't be the only part for Indian bowling.

[Jersey #10]

A pitch which can produce 4 successful Innings! a pitch which is bouncy and quick on the first two days and then starts to crack down after lunch on the third day.

[Dooks]

No wonder people are turning away from test cricket in India :-(. What a boring batting fest this was - knowing full well this would be a drawn match. The pitch should have something in for everyone not just bat away for 5 days. They should take away the test from Ahmedabad until they re-lay the pitch.

[Nova]

I was not happy about this. The pitch is newly laid. Looks like the curator got it wrong, lapse in judgment or whatever but the end result was batsman's paradise. Not the right way to play "test" cricket.

[vvvslaxman]

Let us face it..... In Indian conditions we cannot produce seamers paradise that behaves the same for 5 days. At best it will last for one session. Whoever bats first will be at a disadvantage. So to produce more results India should prepare spinners paradise. That is much easier. Yes. It is difficult to produce a pitch that starts crumbling exactly on day 4. Some times it might start crumbling from day 2. So be it. Atleast we will get a result. This way atleast in the first innings both teams will have an opportunity to play under similar conditions.

[coffee_rules]

Nagpur 08 was a good pitch. Not a flat one, it had everything. We should aim to produce such pitches. Even Ponting praised it.