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Cricket by design

If catches win matches, pitches bring in riches. Take the flaming controversy over the one in Kanpur, where India squared the Test series with South Africa. The track at Green Park, where the ball spat and turned maliciously, was obviously underprepared to favour India’s spinners. But was that such a bad thing? Isn’t it natural — as the greatest leggie of all time, Shane Warne, suggested — for countries to prepare pitches that suit their players? In Davis Cup tennis, India’s home advantage is invariably secured by staging matches on grass courts. Other countries favour slow clay courts to give their players an edge — and guess what, nobody complains. So why the brouhaha over designer pitches? An important reason for such controversies is the notion of what constitutes an ideal Test wicket. By definition, this has a little bit for everybody — some bite for fast bowlers (particularly in the initial stages), some leeway for batsmen to play strokes freely (especially on the second and third days), and some purchase for the spinners (on the last two days). This is surely an impractical ideal. Even if it were possible to prepare a perfect pitch every time, there is no guarantee it will play as intended — a sudden shower, an outbreak of frost, gusts of strong wind can make the best-laid plans of mice and groundsmen go awry.

More importantly, rather than enhance the game, perfect wickets rob it of life. No disrespect to Virender Sehwag, but could his magical 319 in the first Test at Chennai have come from anything less than an absolute belter? Would you even have heard of Jasubhai Motibhai Patel if it wasn’t for — ahem — the “newly laid” pitch at Kanpur? The off-spinner who claimed 14 Australian scalps for 124 captured five more wickets in his Test career, which spanned two more matches. Interestingly, this stood as an Indian record until another short-lived wonder, Narendra Hirwani, struck gold (16 for 136) on a Chepauk dustbowl. Of course, the most innovative award for ‘preparing’ a pitch must go to a club in Georgetown, which is reputed to have allowed a donkey with a weak bladder to graze overnight, after its side had batted. This led to dubious wet patches on the pitch the following morning. Wouldn’t cricket be poorer without sticky wickets, green tops, pitches with uneven bounce, and ‘two-paced’ wickets? Wouldn’t it be a tad dull if we never created a belter — the kind of batman’s paradise that provoked Damien Fleming to exclaim: “You’re likely to find more life on Mars than on this pitch [in Vadodara]”? They say it isn’t cricket to craft designer pitches. We think it wouldn’t be cricket without them.

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