After the uproar over the deteriorating pitch in Kolkata, batting coach Kotak expressed his shock at the extreme spin of the surface, noting that the team had envisioned a more standard track. He addressed Gambhir’s earlier comments, particularly the challenges posed by inconsistent bounce.
After Gambhir said the pitch in Kolkata was exactly what the team wanted, batting coach Kotak says they didn’t want to deviate too much from the Eden track.
GUWAHATI: It is Guwahati’s first encounter with Test cricket and the anticipation was palpable as the covers were slowly removed from the pitch on Thursday morning.
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You couldn’t help but laugh when a colleague in the press box, in the mood to predict the climax of a Hitchcock thriller, blurted out, “Looks dry, doesn’t it?” when only part of the cracking fold was visible.But then he can’t be blamed after everything that’s happened around the 22-yard line over the past week. The blame game reached another level at the Eden Gardens as the pitch fell apart over two days, India lost and coach Gautam Gambhir eventually took it upon himself to say, “This was exactly the pitch we wanted.”He has patronized Eden curator Sujan Mukherjee, but CAB president and former India captain Sourav Ganguly has made it clear that for India to turn its fortunes around, it needs to play on better tracks.Team India did not seem to be impressed by Ganguly’s tough talk. On Thursday, just before practice, batting coach Sitanshu Kotak let it fly.“Obviously we want the pitch to turn, but not the way it happened in Kolkata. From the second day, the top layer of the Eden wicket was too dry. And the layer underneath was very hard because there was a lot of rolling, which led to variable bounce… It’s not like anyone wanted it that way, not even the curator, but it happened and it happened to him and now it’s happened.” Maybe some people have an individual agenda, we wish them luck, but it’s not possible,” said Kotak.But that’s a game that’s already lost and there’s no point in thinking about it now. Attention now shifted to the Barsapara track, which had a greenish hue two days before the Test.But no one is ready to believe it will stay the same come Saturday morning. While BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia, who is also the ACA cricket supremo, feels that it is up to the technical people to take up the matter, South African bowling coach Piet Botha is keeping his cards close to his chest.“I looked at the pitch and there’s still two days to go so it’s hard to say if they’ll be able to cut more grass before then or not… That’s obviously going to make a difference,” Botha said.Kotak, on the other hand, expects the pitch “to be better” than it was in Kolkata.“It was surprising how the ground at Eden came out the other day. But this wicket will probably play better. It’s hard to predict seam movement at this stage or how much live grass there will be. That we’ll know when the covers are finally drawn on Friday night and how the weather holds,” Kotak said.If you watched the last series between India and Australia Down Under earlier this year, you might have gotten used to the curator talking to the media about the possible nature of the pitch, saying a day or two into the Test.But it’s a completely different story here as BCCI curator Tapas Chatterjee almost went into hiding when asked to explain the nature of the pitch. “Please excuse me, thank you,” was all you got.But then, that’s par for the course. What is Indian cricket without a sense of intrigue and secrecy – if at times forced – in every nook and cranny?
