In Test cricket, let the pitch be imperfect
The series between India and South Africa has, once again, reignited the debate about the role that pitches play in cricket. It's an old debate, but which has a new relevance given the worry about falling attendance at Test matches. As Kohli has argued, having result-oriented pitches is better than five-day run feasts, which end in dull draws. When ball dominates bat, a result is always more likely.
On paper, good pitches are those that don't have variable bounce, if the batsmen nicks a ball it should carry to the slip fielder, matches should last five days, the pitch should provide an even balance between bat and ball. There's something in it for everyone, batsmen, fast bowlers and spinners. This obviously has not been the case in the recent series.
The Indians argue that when we go "there", we always get fast and bouncy tracks, so when they come visiting, they should also learn to cope with Indian conditions. But there's a difference between natural Indian conditions and doctored/synthetic Indian conditions. Fast and bouncy pitches are not unplayable, in a way that our pitches were in this series. Even Indian batsmen were mostly at sea. Also, in a long series, say in Australia, you get different kinds of pitches over the course of a series. Not every pitch, match after match, is preternaturally fast and bouncy. Here every pitch, every match pretty much, was a dustbowl.
Pitches also are known to have their individual characters. Lord's is known to play a certain way, WACA has its own particular nature, Mohali has always had a touch of grass on it. When a team doctors the pitch to its home advantage, you're killing the natural character of the pitch, and that, to my mind, is taking away from the charming uncertainty of the game. If every pitch is a dustbowl, the game becomes as monotonous as an interminable run feast on a flat track. As Rahul Dravid said, albeit in a different context - he was referring to Ranji matches on rank turners folding up in two to three days - "We don't want wickets where matches finish in two days and people who are bowling darts are getting six-seven wickets."
The Indians might feel that they come in for undue criticism for making pitches that play to their advantage but that's not true. England played Australia at Lord's in July this year; the pitch was roundly criticised by the English media. It was slow, and seemed to have dramatically changed character in a month's time. As Ricky Ponting said: "There's such a thing as home ground advantage but I think that's taking it a little bit too far. What we saw today is a very uncharacteristic Lord's pitch. I think all anyone wants to see is the character of that ground come out and the character of the pitch come out... It's a very, very different pitch than what we saw against New Zealand only about a month ago. It sounds like the administrators or team captains or coaches might be getting to the grounds men and asking for certain pitch conditions. I don't think that's right. I don't think that should ever happen in the game."
Which brings us to the question of the ethics of such an intervention. India was traditionally known for producing flat decks that would favour spin as the match progressed. The trend of having rank turners, that would spin viciously from the first day itself, seems to have started from the time Ganguly became captain. Dhoni and Ganguly have continued with this. Of course, when the ploy backfires, the ignominy of defeat is doubled. This is what happened in 2012-13, when England toured India. Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar bowled much better than our tweakers, and bettered India at its own game.
Ganguly's controversial moment came when he backed out of the series decider in Nagpur against Australia in 2004. Instead of a cracked-up dustbowl, the curator served up a grassy knoll. Ganguly didn't play that match. We lost. India went on to score a consolation victory at Wankhede in the last match of the series, with Dravid leading in Ganguly's absence. It was a dustbowl. The match finished in three days. Writing in his autobiography, Standing My Ground, Mathew Hayden said of the Nagpur Test: "The curator, a famously single-minded character with no love of the Indian hierarchy, ignored pleas to shave the deck and left a healthy covering of grass... When Ganguly and Harbhajan went out to see the deck a couple of days before the game, they looked like farmers inspecting crops after a hail storm. We predicted neither would play, and they did not. Ganguly withdrew with a leg-muscle injury that flared up suddenly, and Harbhajan had an even more sudden dose of food poisoning. We put their ailments down to acute cases of "greentrackitis", where you develop a severe intolerance to green wickets likely to give you nothing as a spin bowler and plenty of headaches as a batsman."
Kohli has reiterated several times that what matters most to him is winning. No problem with that. Except that Test match cricket goes beyond winning and losing. A five match series might have no victor. It might end in five closely-fought draws, which could also make for gripping viewing. This can happen only on good wickets that last. The winners and losers table can never tell the complete story. After all, that's the beauty of Test match cricket.