Why did Motera pitch crumble in just 2 days?

AHMEDABAD/MUMBAI: England captain Joe Root would have laughed if someone had backed him to take the most economical five-wicket haul by a spinner in Test cricket’s 144-year history ahead of the day-night game against India.

When 5/8 was written against his name at the end of Day 2, however, the part-timer wasn’t smiling though. England had lost the match by then, in what is the shortest Test since World War II.

The cricket world stood divided with the result and the duration of the game. Was it the pitch? Or inept batsmen? Or was it everything?

Rank turners are no exception in the subcontinent, but for a match to end in just over five sessions is an altogether different thing. This, even if the hosts boast of R Ashwin (who became the second-fastest to 400 wickets) and an in-form Axar Patel (match haul of 11 wickets).

“If @anilkumble1074 and @harbhajan_singh bowled on these kind of wickets they would be sitting on a thousand and 800?” Yuvraj Singh tweeted.

There was counter arguments too. England great Geoffrey Boycott wrote: “There is nothing in the rules that says what type of pitch should be prepared. We had first choice of the surface and they were better than us.”

That was the divisive impact of the third Test—greats taking a dig at the conditions and the playing style of their own teams.

The Ahmedabad pitch saw puffs of dust at the popping crease right from the first session of the first day.

Virat Kohli, though, saw nothing amiss. He said that the low scores was due to “lack of application” from batsmen.

Yet it is difficult to explain why so many great players of spin collectively forgot how to counter it in this match.