Indian Pitches play Truant

A big yawn spread over the last three days of the first India-Sri Lanka game at Motera, followed by an uproar that test cricket is passé. Trials and tribulations are on, with differing opinions on the future of the 'real' cricket. Generational irreverence takes the blame along with the supposedly faster life. But these seem intuitive; rationality delivers one answer: poor quality pitches.

Mr. Dhiraj Parsana, curator at Ahmedabad, smiled for the TV cameras, but into the few sullen faces in front of the TV. It is incomprehensible that the art of sprouting a sporting wicket is tougher than a surface test on the moon for bonding of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Let us be umpires and give the benefit of doubt; incessant rains affected pitch preparation at Ahmedabad. If so, what about the Chennai test against South Africa in 2008? Track for the second test at Green Park too looked a mean park for new ball bowlers sans an inspired spell or two.

Convention dictates two kinds of pitches - fast and bouncy tracks and slow turners, with the latter believed to suit Indian strengths. Is this true? A batting line up of stroke players wanting the ball to come on, and a spinner, who relies more on bounce than turn. Shastri or Prabhakar do not open the Indian innings any more. Neither do we enjoy the meteoric accuracy of Kumble who could leverage on every spot of dust on the track. If so who are we preparing the slow turners for? Indian batsmen abhor swing as much as I hate Indian curators, but swing is not to be confused with pace.

Match dies along with the ball on a slow pitch. Australia playing Bangladesh in Darwin was a treat as against the demise of cricket when India played Pakistan on corpse like tracks at Lahore and Faisalabad in 2006. A good batsman enjoys bounce more than a boxer. For a spinner, turn without pace and bounce is frustrating, as it is inconvenient for the forward short leg fielder to stamp on the batsman's feet. And by no means, is turn mutually exclusive of pace and bounce. Watch videos of Warne and Macgill bowling on Australian pitches for confirmation.

A theory goes that tracks are slaves of weather conditions. Sure, conditions do play a part, but it is a farce that pitches cannot have pace and bounce in Indian conditions. Science dictates, if not sense, that the soil type, grass cover, root strength, roller weight, watering and most importantly the foundation influence the nature of the rectangle. Nuances necessitate experience, and so we have experienced curators, not greenhorns, preparing test match pitches.

But what ails Indian curators? Is it lack of knowledge or skill or sense or intent or all of these? Behavior of the most successful Indian captain going into the Nagpur test against the best team in the world points to an entirely different reason. Curators are puppets in the hands of a handful of defensive leaders on and off the field, abetted by a spineless governing body.

Change remains a dream. Details of this dream has curators objectively evaluated by an independent team. After an Ahmedabad like debacle, the curator is relegated to make a pitch for the Saurashtra-Delhi match at Rajkot. And the dream ends with the picture of Tendulkar playing a 2003 world cup - Durban - off Caddick like pull shot on a bouncy track at Kotla.