Slower, lower pitches are a concern

8220;Wives8221;, Navjot Sidhu once said in a style only he can get away with, 8220;are like pitches.

8220;Wives8221;, Navjot Sidhu once said in a style only he can get away with, 8220;are like pitches. You never know which way they will turn!8221; I wonder if women are more entitled to feel that way about husbands but even if we stick with the original Sidhuism, my experience, and that of many friends, suggests wives are far more predictable and reliable. For a long time now, we8217;ve been hearing from captains and groundsmen, and many other sages, about pitches in India and about how they are going to crumble and turn and the only point of debate seems to be when rather than if. But more often than not, pitches are getting slower and lower and flatter and seem to bind better as the game goes on.

One person who would know that better than anyone else is Anil Kumble. Through the nineties, he demolished teams on pitches that crumbled and offered uneven bounce and he knows that doesn8217;t happen too often now. And so he would take such comments, in his usual stoic manner, with a pinch of salt and just move on. However, the fact that our pitches get increasingly slower and help neither batsman nor bowler produce attractive cricket is a matter of concern. Like pre-election announcements, meant to be heard rather than believed, we keep hearing of how our pitches will be redone to produce better cricket. Now, Daljit Singh is saying something similar and I hope we can recall optimism from the ruins it lies under.

One test is probably too early to judge Kumble as captain. He has made some fine moves and set some good fields but his best moment actually came a day before the Delhi Test when he said VVS Laxman would play. Kumble has been a hardworking cricketer and understands that nobody likes uncertainty for it merely festers negative thought. It would have been unfair to let fine players like Laxman go to bed on the eve of an important match not sure of whether or not they will play. It has been done before and the less frequent it is the better it is. Laxman responded with a classy knock and if that surprised people maybe they are watching the wrong game!

Now, people feel the need to react similarly about another fine and gutsy player. Since he began opening the innings, Dinesh Kaarthick has hardly ever failed. For a man not yet 23, he has been shunted all over the order and in the field, has faced more uncertainty than a stockbroker and has inevitably responded with good cheer and great attitude. He is not prone to making wild statements and, let8217;s face it, is performing a role that more pedigreed players were not too keen on. Openers have to be persevered with, you don8217;t throw a fresh lot in everytime, and that means riding the trough from time to time.

For Yuvraj Singh it means going to first class cricket and scoring a potful of runs. Honestly, I don8217;t know what he was doing in Delhi when he could have been playing for Punjab and, if he has no role to play with bat or ball in Kolkata, he must insist on leaving and playing a Ranji Trophy match. A big, and more important, long innings in the middle will do his case no harm so that when the time comes, as it inevitably will, he will be ready.

Yuvraj is one of the few to have emerged from Robin Singh8217;s report with flying colours. Indeed, he remains as sharp as ever and hits the stumps better than almost anyone else in world cricket. But someone needs to be worried about why Robin8217;s report is in the media and what it means to future reports he might want to, or have to, write. The routine leaking of information from the BCCI is something they need to worry about but currently all the action seems to focus on the trivial. The Vengsarkar issue was a small matter; a smart organization would have ticked it off a things to do list in no time at all. When the trivial begins to occupy time there is little left for the crucial.

If Indian cricket, and its attendant arms, has to waste time talking and writing about a selector8217;s column, we are in deeper trouble than we care to admit. And I8217;m told the search for the coach is giving high budget reality shows a few jitters!