Indian batsmen have found themselves short against spinners of others teams in recent time both in India and overseas. This development has prompted the BCCI to reevaluate their policy of producing fast and spinning pitches in domestic cricket.
TOI has learned that the curators have been told to deviate from focusing on green, seaming pitches and produce pitches that will take more turn, as early as the second day of a match.
In the past 7-8 years, the BCCI has focused on producing green, pacy and seamer-friendly pitches to help the batsmen get ready for challenges of playing overseas. However, with India struggling against spinners outside of the country has prompted BCCI to rethink its strategy. One major factor in this rethink has been India folding to the off-spin to Moeen Ali on two consecutive England tours.
It is learned that fresh instructions were laid out at the curators’ workshop held in Mumbai recently, before the start of the Ranji Trophy season.
“The curators were clearly told about the problems Indian batsmen are facing against Moeen Ali. Names like former English spinners Jeremy Snape and James Tredwell were also taken as references,” a BCCI official close to the development told TOI.
“Videos of Nathan Lyon bowling on Australian pitches were studied. If a finger-spinner like Lyon could extract turn from Day Two on those bouncy, seamer-friendly pitches, then Indian pitches too could have that balance,” the official added.
The board also introduced the system of having neutral curators to prevent doctoring of pitches when teams got desperate for points at the business end of the Ranji season. “The brief has always been the same — produce result-oriented pitches. This year, the curators have been told not to be shy of providing spinning tracks,” the official said.
As per TOI, it was Anil Kumble who had raised this issue when he was the chairman of the BCCI’s technical committee. Former India opener Gautam Gambhir, who has been actively playing domestic cricket for the last five seasons, had raised the issue with Kumble three years ago.
“It’s as much a challenge playing on spin-friendly tracks as on seaming tracks. Curators are scared to make spinning tracks. For them, result-oriented pitches are only green tops. There are not enough turning pitches in India which is why we are not getting good spinners. We have lost the art of playing spin and that’s why we struggle against overseas spinners,” Gambhir had told TOI during the 2015-16 season.
“The only solution to it is five-day cricket. I told Kumble about it. This will take out the rank turners and overtly green tops as well,” Gambhir had reckoned.
(Inputs: Times of India)
