Pitch Perfect?

Talk of the second Test at the Eden Gardens here, and chances are the discussion will meander towards the nature of the pitch. Will the ball turn viciously? Will some grass be left on the track?

Though one wonders whether the pitch deserves as much attention as it often gets, this time it looks justified because of a few reasons apart from the fact that the ‘numero uno’ status is at stake.

India denied South Africa a Test series win two years ago with a sleight of hand from the curator. But more importantly, there does seem to be some grass here, which can be detrimental to India’s fortunes.

Dale Steyn showed and then indicated after his first-match effort, that blistering pace can rip through a batting line-up on any pitch.

Similarly, spinners are capable of tormenting batsmen on the most unhelpful of tracks, like Indian spinners of the 1970s showed time and again. Ask any of the famed quartet of yesteryears (Bedi, Chandra, Prasanna, Venkat) and chances are that you will be told: “What is a spinner for, if he needs the pitch to help him turn the ball?”

But it is natural that the Indians hope to extract turn here, even if they themselves did not exactly come out with flying colours against spin in Nagpur, because it is their best chance of levelling the series. However, if the pitch indeed turns out to be juicier than the Nagpur one as is being speculated, India’s resilience will be put to stern test.

“There is a little grass on the pitch and so the seam bowlers will get help. It looks quite hard and I don’t see it helping spin, at least on the first two days,” Dhoni said.

“I also expect that the wind will help swing bowling more than in preceding years because there are no stands (the stadium is being renovated) on one side of the ground,” added Dhoni, who did not seem averse to the idea of playing Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma and S Sreesanth in a shift towards the pace attack.

Smith said it was difficult for him to predict the nature of the pitch. “Obviously, there has been a lot of talk around the wicket. I haven’t seen it today but it looked pretty good yesterday.

I am sure it will be a pretty good wicket, it always is here. Let’s hope that there’s little things like that that will distract the Indians a little bit, it will definitely help us,” said Smith.

“We have been exposed to a lot of Indian cricket through the IPL. We were able to plan against them (Indians) having seen the footage of the players from IPL matches,” he added.