Pitch can’t be blamed alone as England show no fighting spirit

The day-night, pink ball Test at Amdavad’s new Narendra Modi Stadium finished in less than two days, creating a furore about whether the pitch was befitting a fiveday match. Expert opinion was divided down the middle.

Michael Vaughan and Dilip Vengsarkar thought the 22-yard rectangle strip was undercooked, unfair to batsmen, and poor advertisement for Test cricket. On the other hand, Sunil Gavaskar, Kevin

Pietersen, Geoff Boycott believed it was more poor batting, rather than the pitch, which was to blame.

It’s a compelling and complex debate. What transpired in the match itself throws up a certain argument but juxtaposed with everything else that has happened in the series, also spells out a different one.

That the pitch was poor is without doubt, whatever the rationalisations — especially by India’s players — after the match. Thirty wickets fell in two days and the match was completed in 142.2 overs. In fact, this was the shortest Test match since 1935, when wickets wouldn’t be covered and the elements had a greater influence on the surface.

Given that the weather had no role to play, and that both sides possessed enough batsmen of calibre, it is not difficult to deduce that the ‘pitch factor’ was indeed crucial. The batting performance of both sides provides statistical support to this argument.

England made a paltry 112 in the first innings and fared even worse in the second, scoring 81. Failure to score runs was not onesided. India were bundled out for 145 in their innings, losing seven wickets in less than a session, with Joe Root, a part time bowler, becoming destroyer in chief!

By the time the floodlights came on, the match was over and done with. Matches finishing prematurely is not rare. In fact most results in Test matches come not in the final over, or even the last hour on the fifth day, but much earlier. Some fantastic contests have finished in 3-4 days.

Weather, pitches, floodlights, colour, condition of the outfield, make of ball all have a huge bearing in this format. Players respond with high skills, sturdy temperament, patience, aggression, astute game sense to come out better in the contest.

If one of the imponderables overwhelms all others, it skews a match badly.

If a pitch has such a strong influence as to make batting pure lottery — for both teams — there should be concern if one skill (even bowling on featherbeds) is taken out of the equation because of the pitch, the Test cricket loses flavour and pertinence.

That said, the second aspect of the debate, about how England failed because of technical inadequacies, inability to learn swiftly from errors and perhaps most because of lack of gumption has deep relevance too.

For some reason, after winning the first Test handsomely (by 217 runs), England fell into a defensive mode — compounded by a dubious rotation policy — and ended up playing into India’s hands.

The debacle at Amdavad must be prefixed by what happened in the second Test at Chennai. Some unnecessary changes were made to the side. Anderson who had been so crucial in the first Test win, was rested for instance, making the bowling weak.

More surprising was the approach of the batsmen. The first Test win had come on the back of an masterly double century by Root and a refreshingly forthright approach in taking on the Indian spinners, Ashwin included.

If, in the second, the England batsmen looked inexplicably unsure, in the third they looked doomed. Having read the pitch wrongly and selected four pacers (including Stokes), the onus was on the batsmen to put up a decent score even if some balls were turning square from the time the spinners came on.

Winning the toss was a huge advantage which was squandered. A score of 225-235 could have put England in the driver’s seat. As Nasser Hussain, former captain highlighted, to slump from 73-2 could not be attributed to the pitch alone, but showed the mindset of the players. They were petrified.

It was no different in the second innings. There was no show of positivity, no enterprise to take the fight to the bowlers. The batsmen seemed resigned to horrid fate. The rout was inevitable.

The Amdavad pitch was no help to their cause, of course. But neither did they help themselves by abject pusillanimity.