Sport Today

Ok before I get flamed for starting another pointless discussion on the
relative merits on the two countries pitches I'll admit that I'm kiwi fan
and I know very little about the mechanics of pitch preparation.

The two pitches prepared for the first two pitches are pretty good one-day
pitches, but not that great as Test pitches. I wonder if that is a mindset
of the officials in India or of the conditions before the tests. In NZ
against India we produced awful pitches, Sorry. It was a very wet summer and
for a number of places we don't have the weather that early in the season to
produce the perfect pitch all the time.

I look at the drop-in pitches at Eden park and Lancaster Park and they
haven't got it right.  Remember the glued pitch against SAf. that would have
been even more of a road than Mohali.
The best pitch in NZ was Carisbrook and we didn't get a test for years and
then when we did it rained for five days.

This test series is not fair on the bowlers. The series in New Zealand was
not fair on the batsmen. All in all it would seem to even itself up. My only
disappointment is that Bond and Cairns were not fit enough to join the team
for the test matches.

It is a little worring that there is such a war of words between the Indian
and Kiwi fans we are all forgetting who the real enemy is and that's
AUSTRALIA of course.

Peter McCallum
 Good luck to both the Kiwis and the Indias

Richardson for opener in ODI's

Given a choice between pitches that are dead and produce draws and
pitches like the ones in NZ - I will take NZ pitches any day.

I think you guys need to stop apologizing and take the line - "it is our
homecourt, we will prepare the pitches and if your darling spoilt Indian
batsmen don't like it then thats tough, live wih it".

Ashish

Yes I think that the NZ pitches were a lot more exciting but they weren't
what we were try to produce, they needed two to three days of warm sun on
them to be ready. We got instead rain for the week before the games and
couldn't get the prep time in. We were rightly embarrassed by their state.
India should be embarrassed by their pitches. NZ was never going to produce
a dry brown turner against India at home and we shouldn't but something to
get us to two hundred would have been nice. Indian pitches should by this
stage should be spitting and turning and be almost impossible to survive on,
not this feather bed.

Peter

I agree with the sentiment, if not with the characterization of an apology.

The trouble I have with the recent comments about these pitches is that
India is not out of the woods in this test, and it sounds ridiculous that
some in the team would be blaming the pitches as being slow.  Not until they
have at least saved this test with ease.

Those comments could look real stoooopid, were India to lose.  There's
little worse than losing at home whining about your own friggin' pitches.

FWIW, I think teams should prepare the pitches any which they want to.  If
the Kiwis want to conjure up gardens, fine.  If the Indians want to make
krumblers, fine.  In some ways, I prefer these dead ones to krumblers.  At
least they expose the limitations of the attack, and at least get the pacers
to bowl instead of just removing the shine.

The pitches are the same for both sides, the side adapting to it better will
get the edge.

From India's point of view, the writing's on the wall.  Other teams, imo,
are showing that they can adapt to krumblers better than India has to
greentops.  In a few seasons, if that trend continues, making krumblers at
home will not help.  The Aussies came close to it the last time, RSA has
swept India at home, and now the Kiwis are going home without losing it, may
be even with a win.

Maybe that will bring the authorities to finally invest in pace.  :-)

Hats off to the Kiwis.  Remember all that ridicule about those strange
training routines?  No one's laughing now.

--
Shripathi Kamath

Winning the French Open is great, winning Wimbledon is far more prestigious.

<snip>

<snip>

Amen.

Ashish

I think the Kumble of old would certainly have won us the
Test at Ahmedabad (either bowing out the tail well below
the follow-on target, or running through NZ on the final
session on D5), and there is NO way, NZ would have made
more than 350 on this pitch in his heyday.

(Boy that was a close lbw shout against SRT -- looked out
to me; very very close to leg stump.)

India has been unbeatable at home due to spin, but its largely
been Kumble working his magic -- supported ably at
different times by Raju, Chauhan, and others, but he is
the one running through sides on a regular basis.  Aus 01
and Harbhajan's unbelievable performance is what we
tend to remember, but even with that, I'd wager that
Kumble's career record in India, is probably (by now)
better than Harbhajan's career record in India..

Bharat

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 08:02:51 GMT, "R. Bharat Rao"

Yes, and t I wish Harbhajan had bowled better, we might still have won
that one.

Agree again.

<snip>

Heh. On the morning of the 5th day, in the Ahmedabad test, all of the 4
results were possible, albeit with different probabilities. At lunch on
the 5th day at Mohali, two of the 4 results were possible, albeit only
due to atrocious cricket from India.

IMO, the first and foremost requirement of a test match pitch is that it
should last 5 days without being a complete lottery. It is 5-day cricket
and the wicket should be *sane* (OK, it wears out over 5 days and all, but
still) on the 5th day. It shouldn't be completely random, even if it is
hard to bat on due to a shade of randomness. This is a requirement of a
*test* wicket, considering that a test match lasts 5 days.

The wicket at Hamilton on India's last tour there failed this criterion,
IMO. It was completely random on day 1. As I mentioned earlier, the "best"
batsman was the one who "placed" his edges the best. Perhaps that wicket
may have become better on days 4 and 5, but we never managed to find out.
It wasn't as if the teams were playing particularly poorly either. Both
teams struggled and nobody really did anything terribly wrong in their
respective first innings.

That the wicket shouldn't be such a complete road that the teams struggle
to complete 1 inning each by the 5th day is, IMO, a secondary requirement.
It is one of the requirements of a *good* test wicket.

Mohali and Ahmedabad perhaps fail the requirement of being good test
wickets. Even that is debatable seeing as the game has been alive and
kicking at tea on day 5 of both tests - from the p.o.v. of the game as a
spectacle, what more can one ask for? It's true that the Mohali game is
only alive due to staggeringly poor cricket from India. But to wear a team
out mentally over 5 days and cause them to play atrocious cricket, the
wicket must last 5 days! But IMO the wickets passed the primary criterion
of being *test* wickets i.e. they lasted 5 days, for 5-day cricket. Good
test wickets, I'd agree they weren't.

-Samarth [ what kind of wickets India *should* produce given their record
and everything is a different matter - the above is my general opinion
on test wickets ].