Australia's tour of India

Kumar · Post by **Kumar** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 8:37 pm

I think Indians can't take anything from their performance in this test. Good to hear that Dinesh kept well.. I had read some articles prior to ODI tournament in england that he was too flashy for Seniors in our team..

The problem is , he gotta be perfect to be a permanent part of this team.. Any mistakes, he would be gone in a minute..

Post by **Dhruv** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 10:27 pm

I think Dinesh probably won us the test. If Parthiv had been keeping wickets we would easily have given up more than 13 runs in byes, dropped catches and other misc. gaffes behind the stumps. It is in these close matches that the worth of a keeper who can actually stop the uneccessary runs is proven.

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:03 pm

For those of us who have watched or played baseball, there is a lot of fun when many runs are scored in a match. But there is nothing more exciting to watch in baseball than a duel between two great pitchers. Just follow the following scenario to see how exhilarating it is to see something like this unfold in a major league baseball match:

One pitcher throws a perfect game – 27 batters up and 27 batters retired with no hits, errors or walks.

The second pitcher has a perfect game going into the bottom of the ninth (last) inning. The first batter gets a single and later steals second base. The second batter of the inning grounds out but the base-runner advances to third base. The third batter hits a sacrifice fly to bring home the winning run.

There was only one base hit and one run scored in the entire match yet the game was more exciting than a 12-10 slug fest.

It is exciting to watch a cricket match where a ton of runs are scored but once in a while it is good to see the complete domination of the bowlers over the batsmen as it happened in the Mumbai test match. The good batsmen will struggle on a sticky wicket but they will score runs using the correct technique, and the average batsmen will get frustrated and lose their wicket. It is too bad that the match gets over in a hurry but if you are a connoisseur of cricket then you will find the supremacy of the bowlers to be thrilling and breathtaking.

shashi · Post by **shashi** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 1:36 am

I think they could have as well played the Mumbai test on a paddy field....Indian cricket sucks!!

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 5:15 am

It is a strange phenomenon in Indian cricket that when the bowlers get hammered for a ton of runs and the match ends in a tame draw then few people complain about the pitch. If the pitch favors the bowlers and the average batsmen have trouble scoring runs in double digits then all hell breaks lose. It appears that the spectators go to the match to see lots of runs scored rather than the bowlers dominate the batsmen.

The sponsors are the biggest losers in a shortened match. But a griping three day match that is full of excitement and ends in a thrilling victory will command more viewership than a run-fest match that ends in a tame draw.

If people complain about the varying quality of pitches in test matches then it is time for the ICC to build a prototype of pitch that should be used for all international matches. They can put a cement track and cover it with padding and synthetic turf, and it will have a uniform bounce, pace and spin. Cricket will become even more boring then. INHO, the pitch should be prepared the way it is done right now (as long as the pitch's uncertain bounce is not dangerous to the batsmen). Both teams play on the same pitch so why is there a complaint? The better team will win.

Kumar · Post by **Kumar** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 6:56 am

Bhushan, everybody likes a sporting wicket where this is a good contest between ball and bat.. but this one was a under prepared wicket with dust rising out of the wicket, every time the ball hit the pitch.. Same thing happened in new zealand, where Toss was the biggest lottery..

Winning this test match is not testament to india's tenacity / fightback, but actually lowered India's name in the eyes of international cricket. I for one , think India made a mistake by not having such a pitch in Nagpur.. . After losing in Nagpur, we should have gone for a flat track, where our batsman could have got some time in and get some confidence..

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 9:19 pm

Kumar,

In my own unusual way of provoking people to think outside the box, I am trying to bring out the following problems with cricket:

1. Test playing nations use the pitch to give unfair advantage to the home team. In most other sports the field is not used to give an upper hand to the host team. Factors like crowd noise, weather, etc have given an advantage to one team over the other but the ground, field, court, pitch, table, apparatus, weights, mats, etc should not help one team over the other. (Davis Cup is another exception.)

2. Cricket loves to give the batsmen an upperhand over the bowlers by preparing the pitch to suit the batsmen. A test match where over 35 wickets fall and ends in a victory for one team is more exciting than a match where both the teams score over 500 runs each and the match ends in a tame draw.

Why can't cricket prepare pitches that result in a victory for one test team in over half of the matches played?

Why is there no hue and cry when batsmen slaughter the bowlers for 5 days on a run-friendly pitch (substandard from the bowler's perspective) in a test match and the match ends in a draw but everyone cries foul when the bowlers exploit the substandard pitch and get 18 wickets in one day and one team wins?

Post by **Dhruv** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 10:40 pm

I think a balanced pitch is what we should really be aiming for and pretty much all the pitches that were in the series (save the Mumbai pitch) were balanced and all the matches would have had a result. It is only when the pitch is blantantly poor does a hue and cry occur. One of the reasons why we have more and more results in test matches these days is because of the sporting pitches. The odd pitch though does favour batsmen and the odd pitch (Mumbai this time) favours the bowlers and the less this happens the better the game will be for it.

david · Post by **david** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 3:53 am

Very true!
Waiting for the day, when all the pitches in the world are similar. May be artificial....

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 3:58 am

The Mumbai pitch was a bit overdone in that it favoured bowlers far too much. But cricket is not the only sport where local conditions help local teams. One of the more interesting phenomena in football (ie, soccer) is that no European team has ever won the World Cup when it was hosted outside Europe. Conditions clearly play a part there. Similarly, the English bowlers naturally do better in English conditions because the ball swings more in England (and New Zealand) than it does elsewhere. (Toronto turns out to favour swing bowlers even more..).
In India, most pitches naturally favour spinners: the sub-continental soil is partly responsible for this. Traditionally, Mohali (the home ground of Kapil Dev, Yograj Singh and Chetan Sharma) was deliberately made grassy and (especially in winter, and even more on cloudy days) is the one pitch that usually favours the medium-pacers (occasionally, Eden Gardens would help them too, especially in the post-tea session when a breeze blows in from the Hooghly). Pitches in Australia (except Sydney) and the West Indies (except Port of Spain) are naturally harder and so favour the fast bowlers. This is all very much a part of what makes cricket interesting. It is absurd, in my opinion, to try and forcibly change these factors, which are actually largely a consequence of natural conditions. For the Kiwis to prepare a turner would be just as unnatural as it is for India to produce pitches favouring fast bowlers: it is possible in both cases, but requires the curator to fight nature forcefully.
In some ways, the Mumbai pitch was inadvertently more sporting than perhaps the curator intended. Rain wiped out the first day, and under cloudy and wet conditions any pitch helps the swing bowlers. So the Aussies benefited enormously in the first innings, but India's batsmen played superbly in the second innings to overcome the conditions and take India close to victory (although the late order let us down for once). To bowl Australia out for 93 in any conditions is a huge achievement, and nobody should take anything away from Harbhajan and Kartik for their performance in the second innings.

gvhvhg · Post by **gvhvhg** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 4:35 pm

I get the feeling that the mumbai pitch was not supposed to be that bad...and that the groundsmen there were just failures

Red_Indian · Post by **Red_Indian** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 6:14 pm

Enough about the pitch already... it was not the worst pitch I have seen - and I don't even remember the last time India prepared such pitches for any match (not even the last series against Australia). I was hoping we would greet the Kiwis last year with such pitches, but alas "sporting pitches" was the buzz word back then.

Sporting pitches my arse!

We played on "swimming pools" in NewZeland - did anyone raise any concerns back then? Heck, we didn't even lodge a complaint, even when we had teams losing 8 wickets chasing a score of 110 in almost all matches - and I'm talking about the one dayers!

Is it sporting of NZ to make such pitches? Why isn't there any criticism when one can't differentiate between the pitch and the outfield at Perth?

I don't know why people think it's okay to create pitches that seam a lot, but not ones that turn. Somehow over the years the foreign teams, who can't play spin and hence look down upon turners have managed to convince everyone that turners are "bad wickets" - when Australia gets bundled out for 96 in the 4th innings, it's because the wicket was "under prepared", but when India gets out for 120 on a cold, windy first day on a green, wit pitch at Eden Park it's because "they can't handle pace". GIMME A BREAK!!

Coming back to the pitch in question, it was nowhere near as bad - it's not the curator's fault that you're looking to score those 100 odd runs in 30 overs because you have an evening flight or whatever when we still have two full days of cricket left. Or maybe you have an itch that forces you to hit a four every over or get out trying to do that. None of the australian batsman were prepared to be patient - heck, Indians could have bowled for 3 more hours on that pitch and Gillespie wouldn't have gone anywhere - because he has the right kind of defensive technique for these conditions - probably the best defense in the Australian team. There was nothing wrong with the pitch, if you ask Gillespie - it's just his team mates who can't play out the maiden overs are moaning about this pitch.

And yes, Ponting is only making such a big deal because he came back into the team and they lost - Gilly gets all the credit for the series win etc. And of course, because Gillespie averages the same as him in India

gvhvhg · Post by **gvhvhg** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 6:32 pm

But the point about the pitches in these tests were that they were clearly bad and supposed to favor the home team...but we lost the series...so...clearly it wasnt good (or bad

) enough

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 12:30 am

Well said, Red_Indian. The shots that got Hayden and Gilchrist out in the final innings had nothing to do with the pitch -- they simply reflected these batsmen's inability to play defensively against spin. If you have a modest target of 107, it makes complete sense to deploy your defensive abilities and graft away toward the target, but the Aussies simply didn't have the ability to that (except Gillespie and Kasprowicz, who got out to an impossibly good ball). Sachin and Laxman showed that it is possible to attack on a pitch like this without being reckless (each got his eye in before playing strokes, and absolutely sublime strokes at that). But the stroke that got Sachin out was no better than the one that got Gilchrist.
As for the pitch itself, it may have been marginally under-prepared, but the torrential rain on the first day completely changed the pitch -- so it's inappropriate to blame the curator. Ponting's extreme remarks are ludicrous and aimed at absolving himself of blame. I was surprised at his uncharitable and thoroughly unsporting remarks at the end of an enthralling test. Whether a test is exciting because bowlers dominate or batsmen do doesn't matter. The pitch helped create a great test match, so kudos to the curator.

jaydeep · Post by **jaydeep** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:26 am

Australian media also talking less on Pitch fiasco ... They r blaming batsmen for playing rash shots ... In some articles they mentioned even club playing players also know how to stand and chase modest target ... In aussies media's view 6 players get out unnecessarily when they r having another 6 sessions to get that target ... So guys now we r getting picture of Ricky's outburst on pitch from here ... He is just trying to save his and his team mates arse by blaming Wankhade's pitch ...

Jaydeep.