In Hamilton, Sri Lanka say track is ‘doctored’

                                        

“It was not so much a Test match as a low-grade farce. It was apparent from the day India arrived that all stops were being pulled to ensure their batsmen played on the most difficult surfaces possible.”

That was the journalist Richard Boock writing in 2002 in the New Zealand Herald after a Test in Hamilton that was played on a grassy pitch indistinguishable from the rest of the square.

It was the first time in the history of Test cricket that a team scoring less than 100 runs had managed a first innings lead and the first time since 1980-81 that a Test had finished without anyone scoring a 50.

It’s 2015 but it could be 2002 all over again. Now, it’s the turn of Sri Lankans to complain about the pitch that awaits them in Hamilton. The interim coach of Sri Lanka Jerome Jayratne has lashed out. “I am assuming here that the wicket has been doctored to suit the New Zealanders, which is understandable. There is more than 18 millimetres of grass on the wicket,” Jayaratne said.

Pitch preparation has been the controversial theme of late. South Africa played on a under-prepared track in Nagpur Test that led to International Cricket Council terming it a “poor” pitch and seeking an explanation from the Indian cricket board. The Nagpur track had led to a chorus of criticism from the media, some former players from India and overseas. The Indian captain hit out against media saying those who haven’t played international cricket have no right to criticise and also took on the former cricketers. It was a mess all around.

The current Hamilton track prepared for Sri Lanka perhaps suggests an emerging pattern. Are the home pitches going to be loaded so much in favour of hosts?

Sri Lanka had travelled with three specialist spinners – left-armer Rangana Herath, who played in the first Test in Dunedin, and offspinner Dilruwan Perera and uncapped legbreak bowler Jeffrey Vandersay.

The highly optimistic selection was based on the recent pitches in Hamilton which have been dry.

Trying to maintain streak

It’s not known whether the pitch preparation is related to New Zealand’s home record. This is their joint-second longest streak of Test wins at home as they haven’t lost in the last 12 Tests played at home after the defeat to South Africa in March. A win in Hamilton will enable them to equal their longest streak of 13 undefeated Tests. India were desperate to win under a new(ish) Test captain against a South African team who had won the T20 series and the ODI series that preceded the Tests, and one wonders whether New Zealand are in pursuit of a home-record wins.

It remains to be seen how the New Zealand management react to remarks from the Sri Lankan camp. India hadn’t taken it kindly to Nagpur criticisms and Kohli had done some whataboutery suggesting pitches in overseas were loaded against India in the past. In reality, India have to go back to that 2002 series in New Zealand to validate that accusation.

Here is a report from NZ Herald on that 2002 infamous series. “The lasting impression from this Test series will be the substandard pitches that India were forced to bat on and the subsequent drop-off in the quality of cricket. It was almost more of a comedy than a cricket Test, a slapstick type of performance that set all sorts of records for all the wrong reasons.”

There have been no news, yet, of any Sri Lankan batsman walking out of a nets session but back in 2002, Sachin Tendulkar did walk out of a training session. After he played a few deliveries and saw the ball cutting away outside off after landing outside leg, Tendulkar reportedly walked away to take some throw downs. When the ball misbehaved even then, he quietly tucked the bat under his arm and left.

Subsequently, a year after the tour, Tendulkar spoke his mind about the state of the pitches. “In New Zealand last year, there were some wickets where everything was happening, where the bowlers didn’t do anything, it happened only off the wicket. It gave false confidence to the fast bowlers and demoralised the batsmen. The batsman began to look for technical flaws in their game which didn’t exist. It didn’t disturb me at all because I knew we were playing on tracks that were not international standard. If you play the entire series 11 innings … and not a single batsmen gets a 100 from one side – Viru got a 100 for us, but no one did for New Zealand and then in four Test innings nobody got even close to a 100… one team scores 110 and the other 92 … the score board should tell you whether it’s a “fair” track or a “sporting” track, as they keep calling it. It was rather too sporting… “

It looks like Angelo Mathews might now nod his head in agreement.

- See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/in-hamilton-sri-lanka-say-track-is-doctored/#sthash.jqIeNpnj.dpuf