A huge controversy was created when a British news outlet ran a report on how the BCCI forced the ICC to let them employ a used pitch for the India v New Zealand first semifinal of the ICC World Cup 2023 being played in Mumbai on November 15.
According to the Daily Mail UK report, the BCCI changed the surface for their team's semi-final without the authorization of the ICC to suit India.
Pitches for ICC events are created under the supervision of the governing body's consultant, Andy Atkinson, who determines which of the numbered strips on the square will be used for each game in advance with the home board.
However, the agreement has been broken as the competition nears its conclusion, with the semi-final scheduled to take place on a field that has already been used twice, potentially benefiting India's world-class spinners.
The pitch for Wednesday's game at Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium was intended to be No 7, a completely new surface that had not previously been used for any of the venue's four group games.
However, according to a WhatsApp message distributed on Tuesday to a group of more than 50 BCCI and ICC officials, the first semi-final has been shifted to pitch No. 6, which has already hosted games between England and South Africa, as well as India and Sri Lanka.
But now the ICC has given out a statement regarding this issue and mentioned that pitch changes are a common trend. They further added that the change in playing surface was done at suggestion of the local curator and the ICC pitch consultant was in knowledge of the change.
“Changes to planned pitch rotations are common towards the end of an event of this length and has already happened a couple of times. This change was made on the recommendation of the venue curator in conjunction with our host. The ICC independent pitch consultant was apprised of the change and has no reason to believe the pitch won’t play well,” RevSportz shared the ICC statement.
