Home advantage: a curse or a refreshing change?

Tit for tat?

A year and quarter ago, India was in England struggling to put up a fight or in precise terms struggling to find a way to dismiss the English team twice. The bowling attack had 3 medium pacers and an out-of-form Harbhajan, further weakening India’s weak link. Many remember Indian tours correlated to the way the batting fares and hence the Pataudi trophy of 2011 is vividly recalled as a tour which had Indian batsmen struggling on green tops!

As a follower, you would like to believe that the team management rate the performance of the team on the scale of the results and not merely parallel to the views and thoughts that are generated by public debates/discussions. We always have a hazy belief that captains utilize home advantage by preparing tracks to the strength of their bowling attacks. Thus, when England arrived in India, the grass on the tracks was expected to be invisible, the surface soil expected to stick together and hordes of cracks anticipated to open up. So far, whatever we have witnessed isn’t surprising or unexpected, but what is, is the way Dhoni has gone vociferously public with his desire of having rank turners for the visitors! In process he has overturned our belief that the team perceives poor results = lack of performances, but rather poor results = unfriendly conditions; and has confirmed our notion that home skippers ‘do’ have a decisive say in the way the tracks are cooked!

There are two issues here and both demand a separate discussion – a)what extent should the team management have a say in preparing wickets and b)what is the borderline between a disgraceful deck and ‘home favored’ one. Curators across traditional cricket centres take pride in preparing surfaces. Yet, when the home team sends a diktat, these meticulous supervisors are forced to budge. The essence of test cricket is to test players in different conditions and on different surfaces. It is fair enough if the team has a preference for a particular kind of track, but demanding them is taking it too far.

The media, in general, has a tendency to amalgamate the two issues mentioned above; especially in the case of the current test between India and England. Let us try and scan them separately. Dhoni may be on the wrong side for asking tracks to be prepared to his liking, but is having a turning track a disgrace for the game? The cliché used with sporting tracks is that it can offer something for the fast bowlers, spinners and obviously for the batsmen. Tracks which have movement, bounce and carry are often related to the test for the batsman’s ability to tackle movement and pace. Fair enough, but does that imply turning tracks don’t test a batsman’s abilities?

Scuffed up, spin-friendly, loosely-bound tracks offer a different kind of variety to test cricket. A spinner opening the bowling is a strong put-off for many purists and followers, but doesn’t that provide a dimension to bowling and a test for the opening batsmen’s ability to play spin? Rough wickets are ideal for reverse swing; isn’t that a rosy proposition for the medium pacers? 4 slips, 2 gullies is an enticing sight to watch; so are short leg, silly point & men round the bat! A sub-continental deck forces captains to break the tradition of fast bowling followed spinners, but is that trend bad for the game?

There are reasons for tracks in this region (in general) being completely dissimilar to the ones in England/Australia/South Africa in terms of hardness, crack breaking probability, grass sustenance longevity or their outlook, but doesn’t that command words like ‘diversity’ or ‘variety’ rather than ‘non-sporting’ or ‘disgraceful’? This piece, at no point, is trying to suggest that preparing dust-bowls is the way to go, but rather advocates for a change in the way test cricket in the sub-continent is perceived. The Wankhede track, by the looks of it on day 1, is likely to come under the microscope very soon. Chances are post-match reviews will dwarf the limit of spin-friendly tracks and the borderline could become even finer. If the Mumbai surface is found to be below par, the supervisors shall deserve the necessary penalty. But that shouldn’t discourage/ridicule the preparation of spinner-assisting decks. Dust bowls are a strict no-no, so are exaggerated green tops, but green tinge and spin-friendly tracks should be measured by the same ruler and the only parameter to judge should be result delivery and longevity over 5 days!