Alastair Cook on home pitches

[saneindian]

Interesting comments from Cook about the English pitches "I think we're getting a bit too carried away with the wickets," he added. "To me it's our skill levels and sometimes we haven't been good at certain times and haven't won. I think there was a directive sent out by Hugh Morris [managing director of England cricket] at the beginning of the year suggesting what wickets we would like. At certain times squares are quite hard to change, but as an English side we always want carry on the wicket." http://www.espncricinfo.com/england-v-sri-lanka-2011/content/current/story/522352.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Imagine a BCCI official directing groundsmen on the kind of pitches the team would like? The western media would start crying "doctored pitches" and what not. Still remember the hullabaloo MSD giving a check to the Kanpur curator had created in 2008.

[The Outsider]

Imagine a BCCI official directing groundsmen on the kind of pitches the team would like? The western media would start crying "doctored pitches" and what not. Still remember the hullabaloo MSD giving a check to the Kanpur curator had created in 2008.

That's a classic example of half truths being distorted into something sinister by the media. It has been a tradition for decades for the players to pool in some money and give it to the ground staff at the end of every match. Our esteemed 'journalists' probably did not know about it and morphed the story into some bribing footage.

[saneindian]

That's a classic example of half truths being distorted into something sinister by the media. It has been a tradition for decades for the players to pool in some money and give it to the ground staff at the end of every match. Our esteemed 'journalists' probably did not know about it and morphed the story into some bribing footage.

Exactly. The worse thing was no one pays attention to this when the team loses a home test and yet the money is pooled and given to the groundsmen but it became an issue only when we won and the Saffers started moaning about it!

[phaedrus]

oh god, wait till they twist it into a match fixing story. paying money to lose a match

[saneindian]

^ That was an old event. Saffers did make a lot of noise after losing that test.

[therocky]

Roads ho ya Green tops, jitenge sirf hum

[phaedrus]

^ That was an old event. Saffers did make a lot of noise after losing that test.

yeah, i know. talking about another situation like that cropping up

[Crookbond]

Did South Africa make noise? I think it was more the Indian media and the ICC who made that noise.