The ground reality of Indian cricket - stadiums and numbers

Indian grounds – a batsman’s dream, a bowler’s nightmare

The results at home have been completely one-sided

A look at some interesting numbers pertaining to Test venues may just point out the problem to us. Since the 2003 World Cup, a lot of water has flown under the bridge called Indian cricket and so it is a safe reference point for us. I’ve kept just one criterion for the stadia to satisfy. For this analysis, the stadium must’ve hosted at least 4 Tests in the given period to qualify.

The list consisted of 51 stadia that have hosted at least 4 Test matches since 2003.

To my surprise, there are 3 Indian grounds in the top ten when grounds are arranged in order of their batting averages. These stadia are: Eden Gardens, Chepauk and Motera.

It would be helpful and worth our time spent watching cricket at these venues if they were also at least in the top 20 in terms of bowling averages. But unfortunately, on a list of 51 grounds, all the above mentioned grounds come in the final ten with bowling averages hovering around 40.

Of the 18 matches that India played at these venues, 10 produced results and seven were drawn. Featuring in the top 10 in the batting averages and in the bottom 10 in the bowling averages tells me that these grounds provide good surfaces for just one aspect of cricket, which is batting. High batting and bowling averages rarely produce good cricket.

Another interesting feature of the victories (For India or for their opponents) at these venues was the margin, which was never less than:

• 195 runs or
• innings and 15 runs or
• 6 wickets

All this points to some seriously attritional and dull cricket.

Pre-2003: Before the mayhem

Let us now compare the stats for Indian grounds for the period i.e. from 1995-2003.

One might find it very interesting when I say that there was just 1 Indian ground in the top 10 viz. Eden Gardens. And equally interestingly, Eden Gardens is the only Indian ground in the last 10 in bowling averages. There were 13 matches played at the above mentioned venues. Nine of them produced results. The margin of victories also tells us a tale:

• Ind v Aus at Chepauk- India won by 2 wickets.
• Ind v Pak at Chepauk- Pakistan won by 12 runs.
• Ind v Pak at Eden- Pakistan won by 46 runs.
• Ind v South Africa at Ahmedabad- India won by 64 runs.

All this simply tells us a tale of deteriorating standards of Indian wickets. And our batsmen unfortunately have become extremely used to playing on such placid pitches. Not just our batsmen, but our bowlers too are plagued by the same problems of not getting any assistance from the tracks.

One simply has to look back at heydays of Test cricket to understand what a Test cricket wicket was. These lively wickets produced some of the most memorable cricket at least in terms of skill. The wickets deteriorated and the games usually hurtled towards their conclusion on the final days and all that provided some edge of the seat stuff. In layman’s words, the standard of the pitches is dropping in India and that’s about it.

The inevitable drop in standards

This current setup may be able to sustain and produce decent batsmen for a few more years. But soon after, my prediction is that we will go the West Indies way if things don’t improve soon. Isn’t that a bit too harsh, one might argue. But let’s simplify things for a moment. To produce decent batsmen, you need good bowlers and good wickets. Indian domestic bowling is already quite substandard with all those poor pitches and increasingly greater focus on shorter gains like the IPL.

We are already witnessing a sea of change in the bowling department with India being left with a bowling unit which is statistically the worst performing one in the world. They’ve been quite poor even away from home, so that settles the question about unhelpful conditions. Such is the quality that the unit is unable to utilize conditions even when they are helpful. So my proposition is that with such poor bowlers, you will never produce batsmen of Test quality which is paramount.

A decade and a half ago, Sachin and Azhar single handedly tore Warne apart in one afternoon at Chepauk on a rank turner. A year or so ago, India succumbed to Swann and Panesar on a rank turner at Mumbai without a fight. In the next test, they failed to read Anderson’s reverse swing when they had arguably the best exponent of the craft in Zaheer on their side. In both those tests, rank turners had been requested by the Indian staff. Hard to believe isn’t it?

Another problem is that with the administrators itself. One simple tournament like the Kanga League made Mumbai’s batsmen what they were, near invincible. The tournament was played in the height of the rainy season when the mud hit the batsman’s face before the ball did. A thirty in the Kanga League was worth its weight in gold because the ball would seam and swing prodigiously. A good batsman in the Kanga League was certainly a good batsman in other conditions. The administrators have now killed the tournament by rescheduling it in the non-rainy months.

The game has survived endless such assaults. It has seen and lost wily young cricketers to the two world wars and still come out unscathed. No sport mirrors the ups and downs of life like cricket and that’s probably what endears it to us. Someone may tell me that the future for the sport is very bleak due to haggling in the ICC between the superpowers of the game.

But I’m an eternal optimist and I will believe unto my dying breath that this land will throw up another Sachin. That one fine day, the followers of this great game in this wonderful land will have their lust for a Wasim or a Waqar or an Ambrose or a Holding satiated. That all will be well again with the game we love.