PUNE TEST

BCCI to ICC: Harsh to call Pune wicket 'poor'

by Gaurav Gupta • Published on

Australia beat India by 333 runs in the first Test © BCCI

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has made it clear to the ICC in its reply that it disagrees with match referee Chris Broad's report that the pitch for the first India-Australia Test in Pune was "poor".

The Test finished inside three days with left-arm spinner Steve O' Keefe finishing with 12 wickets for 70 runs. Following the game, Broad submitted his report to the International Cricket Council (ICC), expressing concern over the quality of the pitch that was criticised by many former cricketers. The ICC subsequently forwarded the report to BCCI, which had two weeks to respond. The BCCI sent a strong reply to ICC on Friday. The decision to defend the stand was taken at a meeting of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators.

"That wasn't a poor pitch. The Aussies scored 260 and 285 on it, after all. The definition of a poor pitch is that there's uneven bounce, and batsmen are getting hurt. Did that happen in Pune?

"I agree the match ended early, India scored few runs (105 and 107), but Steve Smith scored a ton in the second innings, and KL Rahul scored a fifty. If a pitch doesn't turn in the sub-continent, then where will it? We beg to differ... this isn't a poor track. We disagree with Broad's observation on the pitch. To term the Pune wicket as poor is harsh," a BCCI official told TOI.

The BCCI's main contention is that it's only the Indian pitches which have come under the ICC's scanner in recent times. They suspect it is a ploy to rob India of "home advantage". In December 2015, the Nagpur pitch was rated as `poor' by the ICC match referee Jeff Crowe after India had defeated South Africa inside three days. "If the pitch offers turn, it's bad. If it's a seaming pitch, like it was at Nottingham in 2015 when England pacer Stuart Broad took eight for 15 to skittle out Australia for 60, than it's said that there's a problem with the batsmen's technique. This is double standards. We'd given the same argument to the ICC in case of Nagpur back then, but the ICC didn't accept it," said a BCCI official.

The ball is now in the court of Geoff Allardice, the ICC's General Manager (Cricket), and Ranjan Madugalle, ICC's chief referee. The duo will review the BCCI's response and study footage from the match before ruling on the pitch. The penalty for a pitch which is ruled substandard for the first time - as may be the case for Pune, which was hosting its first ever Test - is "a warning and/or a fine not exceeding $15,000 given together with a directive for appropriate corrective action," according to Clause 4 of the ICC Pitch and Outfield Monitoring Process.

The problem for the BCCI is that according to this process, a pitch is said to be poor if it offers excessive assistance to spinners, especially early in the match. In this case, offspinner Ravichandran Ashwin bowled the second over of the match, and opened the bowling in the second innings along with left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja. In Australia's case, offspinner Nathan Lyon and O'Keefe opened the bowling in the second innings for them, while seamers Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood bowled only 20 overs between them in the Test.

© TNN

TAGS

RELATED STORIES