The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Pitches no matter, Team India have made them incidental
“MEIN SAB batsmen ko bhagata tha. Even now when batsmen see me, they run away.”
All Pandurang Salgaoncar wants to do is make batsmen run away. And there’s enough documented nostalgia out there to confirm that he did that with a vengeance during his days as Maharashtra’s ‘pace demon’. From hitting Sunil Gavaskar on the hand and forcing him to miss a Test against the West Indies to dismissing Roy Fredericks and Alvin Kallicharran in the same over, Salgaoncar is an oddity — a genuine tearaway fast bowler who missed the bus for India. And he hasn’t lost his innate urge to intimidate batsmen even now as he prepares for his ‘Test debut’ though as chief curator at the MCA Stadium in Pune.
“This pitch will fly. There will be bounce,” is how he describes the pitch on which India will take on Australia in the opening Test on Thursday. It was probably him just getting a little carried away. It’s not what you generally hear about an Indian wicket, not on the eve of a Test anyway. And it’s apparent when you take a closer look at the pitch, which carries a wheatish complexion and a dry texture with a few rough marks, that the ball might bounce but it’ll be a lot less nastier than what Salgaoncar would like us to believe. “Even the cracks that will naturally come up are unlikely to provide much turn for the spinners,” he adds, insisting the seamers will dominate.
While Salgaoncar is recalling the injustice meted out to him in terms of India selection, Dhiraj Parsana — BCCI’S zonal chief curator in this part of the world — is shielding himself from the intense Pune sun sat atop a roller. From there he shouts out instructions to his ground-staff who’re going about their routine fare. Parsana too was a fast bowler in the same period as Salgaoncar but he did play a couple of Tests.
It is then that Daljit Singh, the BCCI’S chief curator, suddenly enters the scene, turning heads around the MCA stadium. He has a brief chat with Parsana before taking him on a recce of the pitch. Salgaoncar’s ominous predictions and the presence of two highprofile national curators, including Daljit, on the scene is enough ideally to generate intrigue. More so when the opposition is Australia, who’ve landed here with two towering fast bowlers and a slew of spinners.
But this Virat Kohli-led Indian Test team have shown repeatedly over the last five months of their home season that pitches and their nature have become increasingly incidental to their preparation. They’ve after all won their Tests and enjoyed an unbeaten run while having played on traditionally subcontinental wickets which have stayed true and have generally been batsmen-friendly. They’ve come from behind in Test matches after the rivals have posted 400+ totals and still managed to fashion dramatic final-day victories, like in Chennai against England.
Their spinners have toiled away on flat wickets and still found a way to run through the opposition twice, and as they head into the final series of the season, the No.1 Test team in the world actually seemed to have created an aura where it’s the Indian players rather than the conditions that a visiting team needs to dread. That they’ve done so without having to rely on any untoward home advantage seems to define the indomitable aura Kohli’s team is generating.
And to think that they were winning Tests on rank-turners, one of which was even reported by the ICC, only 18 months ago. Maybe thosequestionsofhowthepitchwillplayand whether it’ll start turning from the first day if not the first session might become irrelevant soon if they haven’t already. And you couldn’t help but agree with coach Anil Kumble when he insisted that his team no longer bothered too much about the conditions and they were only focused on being aware of what’s in their control. “The least that we discuss is about the pitch, about the toss,” said Kumble.
He then spoke about the different situations that his team has found itself in — be it chasing the game in Mumbai and Chennai against England or encountering seamerfriendly climes in Kolkata against New Zealand — and found a winning “solution”.
“Be it the top order or the lower order, the contributions have been really good. And with the bowling, it’s not just spinners but the faster bowlers as well who have stood up in key moments,” said Kumble.
This is not the first time in their history that an Indian team has dominated at home. But rarely has an Indian Test team looked such a daunting prospect, and not just based on a handful of world-class performers. While Kumble wasn’t too keen in being drawn into directly comparing the successful team he coaches to the successful team that he was a part of during the 90s, he did admit there weren’t too many parallels that could be drawn with some of the achievements of the present lot.
“The things that they have been able to achieve in their careers, some of them have palyed 40-45 Tests, Virat has played 50. Those kind of achievements people have had, there’s not many who we can draw parallels with. Someone like Ashwin has been the fastest to 250 wickets in Test history. That’s amazing,” he said.
Tuesday was an optional net-session with most focus surrounding an intense fitness workout for Murali Vijay. The only other bigname players in attendance was Cheteshwar Pujara while Abhinav Mukund and reserve spinners, Jayant and Kuldeep Yadav, had a run with both bat and ball. The Australians on the other hand partook in a full session. Regardless of what Salgaoncar might have to say, it’s obvious that the Aussies are preparing incessantly for their battles against spin. There were three separate nets for spin bowlers and a single one for the pacers on Tuesday. There was close scrutiny on Usman Khawaja and Matt Renshaw who will be fighting for a spot in the playing XI. Neither looked at ease against spin, often left looking hapless against the local net bowlers.