Former Australian wicket-keeper batter, Ian Healy has called the Vidarbha Cricket Association’s decision not to let Australia have a practice session after the loss by innings and 132 runs against India in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on Saturday last week as ‘horrible.’ He slammed the VCA authorities for watering the pitches at the Nagpur stadium.
According to Cricket.Com.au, a member of the VCA ground staff was seen damping down the pitches at the stadium resulting in the Australian team not getting a practice session post the Australian team’s embarrassing loss on Saturday.
During a recent chat with SEN Radio, Ian Healy said, “It’s really embarrassing the scuppering of our plans to get some practice sessions on that Nagpur wicket. That’s not good, that’s just not good for cricket. The ICC needs to step in here. For them to water the wicket unceremoniously when it was requested for practice is horrible and that has to improve.”
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With the Australian team suffering a loss by innings and 132 runs in the first Test of the four-match Test series, the spotlight has been on the Australian batters with none of them managing to cross the fifty-run mark in either inning. While the talk before the first Test match was about the curators watering selected areas of the pitch, the Australian team did not play any tour game in India.
Post the loss, the Australian management had planned to have a practice session. According to news.com.au, the Australian team management made s request that the post-match watering of pitches be delayed for them to have a practice session.
Australian coach Andrew McDonald told SEN Radio that the planned practice session was not “naughty boy nets” but in accordance with their plans to practice for the next match. The coach also talked about the Indian management’s intent with the kind of wickets they want to play on.
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Australian coach said, “It’s pretty clear isn’t it, their intent with the surfaces they want to play on. We were expecting that coming in so as I said before, we’ve been really clear on what we expected. When we got here we got exactly that. They’re not naughty boy nets today (the planned session). We’ve got a big squad of 17 players so there’s different people on different training programs.”
