India walk safe on brown belt

The first thing that coach Greg Chappell and skipper Rahul Dravid did on reaching Nagpur this afternoon was to visit the Vidarbha Cricket As...

The first thing that coach Greg Chappell and skipper Rahul Dravid did on reaching Nagpur this afternoon was to visit the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA) Stadium. After the two took a quiet walk alongside the pitch, they exchanged glances,nodded to each other and walked back to where the rest of the team members were waiting for a net session.

‘‘It is a good Test match wicket,’’ was how Chappell described the wicket after the team’s four-hour gruelling practice session ended.

Indeed, the pitch still appears to be the same — flat and brown — as reported in The Indian Express last week after being constantly rolled and watered for the entire past week. There is a certain hardness to the track which, according to chief curator Kishore Pradhan, will remain so until the first couple of days of the match.

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Asked if he had any instruction from the Indian team management over its preparation, he vehemently denied saying, ‘‘I have done exactly what my president (Shashank Manohar) asked me to and that is what I always do.’’

Pradhan was the one who had prepared a green top for the third Test between India and Australia played at Nagpur in 2004, apparently under Manohar’s instructions. VCA was then in spotlight for two reasons: one, India lost to Australia badly and, two, Sourav Ganguly refused to play under ‘protest’ after he was not ‘consulted’ before the preparation of the pitch.

The VCA has, of late, been appreciated for providing green tracks during Ranji Trophy matches. No doubt, it did result in Vidarbha’s loss at home on a few occasions, but the VCA had continued with its policy of keeping such ‘ideal’ wickets for the development of junior cricket.

But the wicket for the first Test of the series against England, starting here on March 1, is exactly a reversal of the trend the VCA had been pursuing so far. Therefore, it is evident that the wicket for the game against Australia was the result of the BCCI’s political mess, while the slow wicket now against England, according to a former board official, is a compliment to the newly-elected board and the new captain-coach combination.

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Interestingly England, who have been curious to know the kind of pitches that they will have to encounter in the three-Test series, did not arrive at the stadium after landing in Nagpur today.

Meanwhile, the Indians batted for most part of the afternoon, with the exception of opener Virender Sehwag who flew in late on Sunday evening. Mumbai opener Wasim Jaffer faced a battery of medium pacers and spinners as he prepared to open in the first Test along with Sehwag.

There was also sufficient indication to suggest the Indian spinners will also have a major role to play in the Test. Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh and Piyush Chawla bowled in tandem to the batsmen for a little more than half an hour and may have to roll their arms over together a lot more in this series.