There have been a plethora of stern reactions coming in from Australia after seeing Nagpur’s pitch for the first Test between India and Australia starting from Thursday. The Jamtha stadium ground staff did some special fine-tuning in the age-old Indian way on Tuesday. The pitch curator first watered, then the roller was used only in the center of the pitch, and extra watering was done outside the left-hander’s leg stump.
Ahead of the game, a journalist shared the pictures of the pitch and they have gone viral and that has certainly left the Australian cricket experts fuming. It can be clearly seen that the area outside the off-stump of a left-hander has been left dry and not watered. Also, the rolling has only been done at the center of the pitch and not on the good-length area.
Interesting treatment of the pitch in Nagpur. The groundstaff watered the entire centre of the surface & only the length areas outside the left-hander’s leg stump & then rolled only the centre, stopping short every time they got to the good length areas at both ends #IndvAus pic.twitter.com/Myr2ZblqCg
— Bharat Sundaresan (@beastieboy07) February 7, 2023
Responding to the pitch, senior cricket expert Robert Craddock said on SEN’s podcast, “It’s a multi-toned pitch. The classic saying about pitches is, ‘Oh, it’s the same for everyone. When the Gabba pitch too much grass was left on it, people were saying, ‘Yes, it was not a great wicket, but it was the same everyone. But you can’t say that about this pitch, Australia has six left-handers in their top eight, so if you start multi-preparing parts of the deck that’s straight-up pitch doctoring, it’s poor.”
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Former Australian pacer, Jason Gillespie told SEN WA Breakfast, “I think the Indian curators are looking at a way for India to have an advantage. They potentially think spin will play a huge role and that for the best chance to beat Australia will be to play to their strength.”
While another Aussie expert, Simon O’Donnell said ICC should intervene, “The ICC should step in and do something about it, if they think it’s not right. If they think the pitch is not right, there’ll be an ICC referee at the game and the ICC will be watching this game. But there’s so many when it comes to India, we have all of these discussions, and nothing seems to happen.”
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India holds the Border-Gavaskar Trophy having won the last three Tests series between the teams, including their breakthrough triumph Down Under in 2018-19 and another on the road in 2020-2021. They have been even more imposing at home, where they have lost only two out of 42 tests over the best part of a decade and are on a winning streak of 15 successive series wins.
