Evenness lost in ugliness of batting
Is winning at any cost the right thing to do?
Virat Kohli gave a diplomatic reply when asked if the Mohali turner will become a recurring theme in the series. The Test skipper tossed the matter back at the curator. “…you have to ask the curators, not me. Eventually, we do have a certain nature of Indian wickets that we get. But to make any sort of wicket that don’t (sic) give you result, I don’t see any logic in that. Otherwise, if you say ‘how to keep Test cricket alive?’ You need to have wickets that will give you results.”
Over the last five days, the talk has centered on result, with curator Daljit Singh alluding to it on many occasions and team director Ravi Shastri drawing parallels with the series against Australia in 2001, saying how the current series had acquired similar enormity.
Though comparisons with the 2001 India and Australia teams may be unfair, the wickets on offer then were lively and enabled even contests. In that series, both teams scored big runs, and even the Aussie pacers were among wickets. But on a pitch like Mohali, the wickedness of the surface dictated terms. the evenness of the contest was lost in ugliness forced on batting.
With 34 wickets out of 40 claimed by spinners, it was down to which batting side handled spin better. If India had a fourth spinner, Shastri would have probably played him too in a match where his pacers bowled just 20 overs. There is a school of thought that if seamers continue to be under-bowled, preparing them for seam-friendly overseas conditions should be shelved.
But Kohli takes a different view. “(Of course) Fast bowlers should be better but for that we don’t need to alter home conditions. We can prepare such wickets and get those kind of tracks in first-class cricket. But the bounce and pace of SA and swing of England cannot be replicated here. It becomes a batting wicket which is not result oriented. If you want to compete in Tests, then wickets should be result oriented.”
But if winning is everything, then India should at least create a balance that does not further demotivate the cricket-loving crowd.