The third Test between India and England finished inside two days as the visiting side got hammered by 10 wickets in the final session of Day 2. This has not gone down well with former England cricketer David Lloyd.
Lloyd was disappointed with the pitch provided for the day/night Test in the newly constructed 'Narendra Modi stadium'. A total of 13 wickets fell on Day 1 of the Test and while rating the pitch for The Daily Mail, Lloyd gave it the benefit of doubt. However, seeing another 17 wickets fall in the first two sessions on the second day, Lloyd has rated it 'just as bad as the last one'.
The 'last one' that the 73-year-old mentions here is the pitch for the second Test at the MA Chidambaram stadium. There too, England had lost by 317 runs.
Lloyd wrote in his column for The Daily Mail, "I gave this pitch the benefit of the doubt on the first day but, I’m sorry, it was just as bad as the last one. And the big question has to be asked again of the ICC. Is this how you want the game to go? Tests finishing well under time, this one not even lasting two days? We need answers from Dubai but I’m not expecting to get a single one."
The Lancashire cricketer, who has 237 First Class wickets to his name, calls himself a hopeless bowler and still believes that he would have picked a fifer on that pitch in Ahmedabad.
"But it told you everything you need to know that instead of that second spinner a part-timer in Joe Root took five wickets in six overs! I remember Allan Border once taking a seven-for with part-time spin. And Michael Clarke grabbed a six-for. When part-timers do that something isn’t right. Even I would have got wickets on that pitch and I was hopeless," concluded Lloyd.
