Finally, New Zealand Cricket (NZC), the Kiwis’ cricket board, has admitted that their pitch curators ‘over-reacted’ to the call for ‘pitches with pace and bounce’ during India’s disastrous tour just before the world cup.India had lost both Tests and five out of seven one-day internationals on unusually fast pitches that were criticised by both teams.A recent ‘de-brief’ held in Christchurch, and attended by all the Turf Managers (pitch curators), NZC CEO Martin Snedden and its cricket operations manager John Reid, concluded that ‘‘we may have tried a bit too much’’.This was revealed by Karl Johnson, NZC’s High-Performance Centre Turf Manager, who also attended the meeting. ‘‘Ten years ago the pitches here (New Zealand) were too low and slow. We decided.we needed tracks with bounce and pace. But we maybe overcrossed the line a bit during the Indian series. The pitches for one-day games especially had more moisture than required,’’ he told The Indian Express. Johnson, who visits Pune next week to assist a private academy, works at the High-Performance Centre, which is where the Black Caps are based. De-briefs are held annually, he says, but this was called specifically to discuss the India tour.NZC’s website quotes Reid as saying, on the meeting: ‘‘In the quest for pace and bounce, the turf managers felt (during the meeting) they were too conscious of those demands and had gone a little further than was necessary in their preparation.’’Another invitee to the NZC ‘de-brief’ was the head of the New Zealand Sports Turf Institute (NZSTI), Keith McAuliffe, who also agreed that the curators may have wanted to escape criticism and follow NZC’s resolve to have pitches with pace and bounce.‘‘Our pitches came under fire for doing too much. This is valid criticism in the second Test and in two of the one-dayers (where weather caught out the curators)’’, said McAuliffe.Incidentally, NZSTI is a consultant to the BCCI and helped the relaying of pitches at India’s Test centres at the start of the 2002-03 season.
