Define a good pitch, says Ashwin
R Ashwin is being hailed as a hero, second fastest to 400 Test wickets which has capped a great three in his career. He helped reel in a Test series in Australia from a hopeless position, and India lead 2-1 in this home series against England to have one foot in the World Test Championship final.
But he is also an angry man over what he sees as too much importance being given in India to criticism of the pitches prepared for the second Test in Chennai and the pink-ball game in Ahmedabad. The day-night third Test ended inside two days, the shortest since 1935 and has faced heavy criticism for the wicket where the top layer peeled off in the first session, suggesting it was under-prepared. The India off-spinner countered criticism of the Ahmedabad pitch in a series of tweets on Friday. On Saturday, Ashwin was asked about his tweets. They do not mention names or make it explicit it is to counter the pitch criticism. He had tweeted: “Products are sold using various marketing strategies and that’s an accepted practice! We now live in an era where ideas are also being sold to us and it’s a classic example of outbound marketing...”
He told a virtual media interaction on Saturday: “I thought it was very, very pertinent… I find it extremely hilarious and heinous to a point where you have a thought process and you want everybody to follow that... So, you watch a match, you watch India win the game...But you want people to go back and say ‘India is not winning the game, it is the pitch that is winning the game’. That is not what I want people to do… This is conditioning that is happening, it has happened for a long, long time. When are we even going to wake up to it? My angst against the whole thing is that when people say something, so many others who are watching it are not able to paint it different to somebody who is driving a certain case and selling a certain case to us. This needs to stop.”
However, asked about his former teammate Yuvraj Singh’s tweet—“finished in 2 days Not sure if that’s good for test cricket...”, Ashwin said he didn’t see any agenda in it. “The reason behind my tweets were not in context with anybody in particular. When I read Yuvraj’s tweet, I didn’t get affected. I didn’t find he was telling us anything or trying to suggest anything.” He added: “For me, I want to protect, or at least try and put it out there that people who know me or who are watching me talk at least realise that without their knowledge they are being hypnotised into believing what they are buying.” Asked by an English journalist if the pitch for the final Test would be similar to that of the pink-ball game, Ashwin snapped: “What is a good cricket surface?” When told it was one that produced an even contest between bat and ball, he said batsmen failed in Ahmedabad. India too were dismissed for 143 in the first innings.
The player with 77 caps wants even the good pitches description to be revisited. “What makes a good surface? Who defines this? Seam on the first day, then bat well then spin on the last two days. C’mon, who makes all these rules?” he asked. “We need to get over it and not talk about whatever picture you want to paint. And if you are asking if it was a good Test surface, I didn’t see any of the England players having an issue. They want to improve. They look like they want to have a contest. Is it the players and people who are reporting back that want their players to not compete, and complain about the pitches?
“I somehow find it funny when they speak about the surface, it immediately gets quoted all over our press. And that is the issue here. There have been instances, when we went to New Zealand, both Tests got over within five days—five days for two Test matches. And nobody quoted it.”