The year was 2008. South Africa had arrived in India for a three-Test series and their first port of call was Chennai. The MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chepauk was in typical March form, the last vestiges of the nominal Chennai winter having been burned off by typically fierce sunshine. It wasn’t quite the Ides of March, but the pace trio of Dale Steyn, Makhaya Ntini and Morne Morkel knew and were distinctly amused when Parthasarathy Kannan, the curator at the stadium, spoke lovingly of the 22 yards he had tended to for more than three decades.
“On the first two days, till lunch, the pitch will help the fast bowlers,” said Pacha, as he was endearingly known in cricket circles. “After lunch on the second day, till the end of the third day, it will be perfect for batting. On the fourth day, it will start to turn, just a little. And on the fifth day, it will fully help the spinners.” In theory, that is perhaps the perfect Indian pitch. What happened over the five days of the Test? A small matter of 1,498 runs were scored, including a 278-ball triple-century from Virender Sehwag.
The moral of that particular story was that asking a curator about a pitch he had produced was about as illuminating as a doting grandfather extolling the virtues of his favourite grand-daughter. So, it was curious that Pandurang Salgaoncar, the former Maharashtra tearaway who once famously caused Sunil Gavaskar to miss a Test match after injuring him during a Ranji Trophy game, had only two words to say at the end of the first Test match at his Pune stadium: Ask Daljeet, as reported by The Hindu.
What he meant, was that he was not allowed to produce the kind of pitch he would have liked. One where the ball would fly and the Test last the distance. Apparently there was so much oversight from the curating mandarins of the Board of Control for Cricket in India – and this particular committee is one that is still thriving while most others have been disbanded in the wake of judicial intervention – that Salgaoncar threw his arms up and allowed things to play out.
Virat Kohli has said on record that he did not speak to the curator about the kind of surface he wanted. Yet, there is all-round consensus from unnamed sources that a senior member of the Indian team set-up demanded a rank turner. These ghostly fingers point at Anil Kumble, the coach, but those who know him will tell you he is the last person to make such a demand. He did not ask this when he was the one doing the bowling, and still ended up with 956 international wickets in the pre-DRS era.
When Kumble chaired the International Cricket Council’s cricket committee, there were concerns raised about the quality of Test pitches in general, and specifically, “the common practice of home countries overtly preparing surfaces to suit their own teams”. This was as recently as June, 2016. Is there any reason then, to believe that Kumble, as coach of the Indian team, asked for a surface that would nullify what little advantage the Indian team had?
The question of what constitutes a good Indian turner has changed dramatically in the last few years. If you cast your gaze back a couple of decades you can count on your fingers of one hand the last time an Indian pitch was blatantly spiteful. Mumbai 2004, Kanpur 2008, Delhi 2013. Think back to this season, India’s bumper harvest at home, and it is difficult to come up with one surface that was as undercooked as the one at Pune.
The fact of the matter is that pitch preparation is more art than science. Curators know exactly what to do with the surfaces they work with over an extended period of time. Traditionally, these are men who have learned the ropes on the job, watching and listening, pottering and tinkering, not at universities that dealt with soil composition, atmospheric conditions and such intellectual concepts.
Allow an Indian curator to produce what he thinks is a good Test pitch and chances are you will get a surface that helps the home team more than the opposition. Tell him how to do his job and you may end up with a bit of a lottery. One such gentleman, who has spent a lifetime tending cricket pitches, told Scroll.in what the bottom line was: “It’s quite simple. I can make a fantastic masala dosa. If you bring a masterchef from Italy, he can make a perfect pizza. But if he tells me how to make a dosa, or I tell him how to make a pizza, you will end up with a disaster.”
Pune was not a disaster, but it was an abject lesson in too many cooks spoiling the broth. This Indian team should comfortably beat this Australian team over four Tests – man for man the home side is superior in these conditions – without any help from dodgy pitches. But now that Australia have their noses ahead, India have to do all the running. It’s a case of getting back to the basics. As every club batsman yells down the pitch to the umpire: “Leg stump, please!” this Indian team needs to take fresh guard and back themselves to win two of the three Tests that beckon.
