Australia vs India, 3rd Test: Is the MCG pitch really flat?

On a pitch that the Aussie commentators kept on deriding for two whole days as a frustratingly flat one, the Indian bowlers blew out the Australian batting for a paltry 151 runs.

On the first two days of the Boxing Day Test, there were several instances of balls flying off a good length area, and not just from short of length. Batsmen after accomplished batsmen kept taking blows on their body.

Not just the rookie opener Hanuma Vihari, but even someone like Pujara got hit by the ball several times, when it rose alarmingly. There were quite a few instances of the rising ball evading the outstretched hands of a leaping Tim Paine!

However, there was enough evidence to suggest that the pitch is a two-paced one. Just as there were enough balls which rose alarmingly, there were many balls that kept very low. The wickets of a well-set Pujara and a fluent Ajinkya Rahane to balls that barely rose after pitching, suggested as much.

However, despite such mounting evidence, the Aussie commentators declined to budge from their clearly faulty assessment of the pitch. There was hardly any appreciation of the Indian batting, its extremely disciplined and professional effort.

On the contrary, there were some like Ricky Ponting who criticized Pujara’s ‘slow’ batting and made a prognostication that India would fail to win this test because of his slow batting. What was conveniently ignored was that the pitch was so difficult to score that even a normally fluent Kohli could not accelerate on this pitch.

Now that the Aussies have folded for a paltry 151 runs on the same pitch and their innings run rate at a mere 2.25 was worse than that of India, one would hope that the Aussies would finally admit they were mistaken. But as of now, there is very little to suggest that is the case.

In fact, on the evidence of what Michael Clarke said soon after India decided to bat again, their new pet topic is how wrong Kohli was in deciding to bat again, with a possibility of rain on the fifth day.

That may well be the case, but it’s apparent that the former Aussie cricketers used to world domination during their cricketing days have simply not been able to get used to the current predicament of Aussie cricket. So, they want to find fault with anything and everything except the obvious - the falling standard of Australian cricket.