India and Australia resume their battle for Test supremacy on Thursday in Ranchi at the start of the third match in a series that has already dragged relations close to breaking point.
India won the second Test in Bangalore to leave the series tantalisingly poised at 1-1 but simmering tensions boiled over when the hosts’ captain accused his opposite number of abusing the decision review system (DRS).
While the Bengaluru Test lasted for four days, the Pune Test was over in just over two and a half days — the pitch there being rated “poor” by the ICC, as it turned square from day one.
And now, a couple of days before the toss in Ranchi, the pitch is once again the center of attention. And one Australian website might have taken the panic-mongering a bit too far, perhaps.
Writing for news.com.au, the same author goes in great detail bashing the pitch-doctoring.
Here’s a sample.
- …remarkable scenes in Ranchi on Tuesday indicated that pitch doctoring has now gone to another level and the reputation and integrity of Indian cricket is on the brink of complete embarrassment…
- …if early impressions of this devilish pitch come to fruition, it could be argued India has done nothing to adhere to the ICC’s demands for both teams to play in the spirit of the game…
- If the decision was between well done, medium and rare – India have selected a surface off the menu as raw, dry and grassless as any pitch this Australian team has ever seen.
There were others criticising the pitch as well.
But this is how the Ranchi pitch actually looks on Tuesday, after being watered — yes, it is being watered two days before the Test, so it perhaps won’t be as dry as the panic-mongers would have you believe.
The irony of the Aussie media complaining about the pitch two days before the Test starts was not lost on the Indian cricket community.
We’ll just have to wait and see how it plays though, won’t we?
Featured image: PTI