Former Indian skipper Sunil Gavaskar while talking about the criticism of the pitch at Narendra Modi Stadium in Motera, Ahmedabad said that extreme criticism of the pitch is not really fair.
In the conditions where spinners dominated the batsmen, India won the third Test match by 10 wickets on Thursday.
The pink-ball Test between India and England at the Narendra Modi Stadium finished inside two days with spinners scalping 28 of the 30 wickets as both teams failed to cross the 150-run mark.
The pitch used for the Test match in Ahmedabad has become the center of huge debate with many English pundits including Michael Vaughan, Andrew Strauss, and Alastair Cook Andrew Strauss, and David Lloyd criticized the pitch and labeled it as unsuitable for a five-day game.
However Indian skipper Virat Kohli and his teammates including opener Rohit Sharma and R Ashwin defended the pitch, saying that the batting performance from both teams was not up to the mark.
While weighing on the criticism of the pitch at Motera stadium, Indian legend Sunil Gavaskar said that extreme criticism of the pitch is not fair.
"It’s a free world. They are entitled to their opinions. When you look at some of the more sober criticisms, you realize that some of the extreme criticism is not really fair," Sunil Gavaskar told Indian Express.
Gavaskar pointed out the comments of Geoffrey Boycott, Nasser Hussain, who did not blame the pitch, but instead questioned England's tactics and batting in the match, and said that the former players have spoken fairly.
"As you say, Geoffrey, Nasser, and, Athers have spoken fairly. The rest of the criticism is not really worth taking your headphones off to listen to," he said.
On being asked to give his honest assessment on the pitch, Gavaskar said that it was not a pitch where the ball was misbehaving and added that Test match batsmen should be able to handle the turn or straighter deliveries.
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“It was not a pitch where the ball was misbehaving constantly. Nothing was kicking up alarmingly.Neither was there any great invariable bounce that the ball would shoot. Here, the bounce was actually true, almost. Yes, there was spin but Test match batsmen should be able to handle the turn or the straighter ones,” said Sunil Gavaskar.
Gavaskar further credited Indian opener Rohit Sharma and said that the latter’s batting in both innings showed how to score on this pitch.
"Challenging, but not treacherously challenging. If you look at the dismissals, the batsmen have contributed to their own downfall. More than the pitch, it was about the mindset which did them in. Rohit Sharma’s batting in both innings showed you could score runs on this pitch," he concluded.
(Indian Express Inputs)
