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It’s time pitch preparation is taken seriously

Makarand Waingankar

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Good batsmanship is not about batting well on good surfaces.

It’s about adapting to technique on a pitch that’s not conducive to stroke-making. Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh exhibited that in Delhi.

At a time when batsmen rarely get to play on worn out pitches as India plays fewer Tests compared to limited-over matches, the Kotla pitch that afforded minimum bounce tested the technique of batsmen on both sides.

Remarkable stand

What was remarkable in the Dhoni-Yuvraj partnership was they rarely used pads to smother the spin but placed balls in the gaps and when loose balls came along, hit it either for a boundary or sent it into the stands.

The hallmark of their technique was that they played the ball late. With pitches covered, rarely do we get to see worn out pitches.

Interestingly, one of the greatest partnership on a viciously uncovered turning pitch was recorded at Edgbaston in 1957 when Peter May (285 not out) and Colin Cowdrey (154) batted together for 411 runs against the spin of Sonny Ramadhin of West Indies to save the Test.

Ramadhin and A.L.Valentine had caused havoc in earlier encounters but in the famous match of 1957 when Ramadhin (seven for 49) bundled out England in the first innings, May and Cowdrey came up with a technique of thrusting out the front pad to smother the turn, bounce and spin.

Ramadhin who bowled 98 overs, a world record, for 179 runs, could capture only two wickets. He was never the same bowler again after he was mastered.

Later the same technique was regularly employed by the batsmen in the sub-continent with Dilip Vengsarkar mastering it. Sunil Gavaskar too in the Test against Pakistan in 1987 in Bangalore showed the art of batsmanship on a turning track.

In the 1950-80s the quality of spinners in India was top class and the batsmen had to cultivate the technique to survive.

Good batsmanship

Both Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh were playing so late that they were in a position to play shots without taking risks.

On a pitch that was unpredictable, they had to ensure they used their feet well, take calculated risks after watching the field setting and run intelligently between the wickets. These are very important aspects of good batsmanship.

That it took Yuvraj a decade to master the technique of batting on slow pitches shows he didn’t get to play Tests often enough to master the skill.

The partnership will reassure them that they are capable of playing spin when they play against Muralitharan and Mendis in the Tests later this month.

The Kotla pitch was unsuitable for any form of cricket but the positive that emerged from it was that we have batsmen who are capable of playing quality spin.

Fascinating spectacle

The game of cricket makes a fascinating spectacle when bowlers tend to tie the batsmen down and batsmen come back with a technique to wriggle out of the situation.

Test cricket will survive only if each major country plays a good number of Test matches which will arouse enough interest among the viewers.

The matches in the present series also showed that there is no need to tinker with the limited-over format. But it’s time BCCI takes pitch preparation seriously. For too long now, we have allowed non-qualified personnel to play with the preparation of pitches.

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