BCI secretary devajit saikia in guwahati. (five photos) BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia he also wants the batsmen to get used to all kinds of wickets and hopes to take Tests at as many venues as possibleGUWAHATI: As India suffered a humiliating whitewash to South Africa in Guwahati, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Devajit Saikia, in an exclusive interview with TOI, said there is some soul-searching to be done over the Indian batsmen’s inability to play spin at home. Saikia also said that the five-day wicket is ideal for Test cricket and the players have to adapt to different conditions at different venues.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SIGN UP NOW!excerpts:Gautam Gambhir’s fascination for turning the rank at home is well known. But after the three-day Eden Test, it was evident that the Barsapara pitch was not like that. What was the instruction from the Indian team?I am not privy to developments at CAB and Eden Gardens. But whatever is being done at Barsapara, according to BCCI Chief Curator Asish Bhowmick, who has been overseeing the ground as well as the wickets. I think the curatorial team deserves full credit for presenting such a wonderful wicket. I’ve heard experts say it’s the perfect wicket for Test cricket.
Gautam Gambhir’s Fiery Press Conference: On Lime, Rishabh Pant’s Shot, Pitching & More
There has been a lot of talk about what kind of wicket the head coach wants for the home Tests. But what is the BCCI’s view on the correct Test wicket?Players must adjust to the weather, overall conditions and soil composition, as well as the length of the grass on the field. A Test cricketer is expected to adapt to any kind of wicket. If you look at the batting of Dilip Vengsarkar or Sunil Gavaskar in the past, they used different techniques to play at home or in different conditions in countries like West Indies, England, South Africa or Australia. Everything is variable except the player and he should adapt to the conditions. That’s what the game is all about. That’s the beauty of Test cricket.Despite all the success in limited overs, now in a span of 13 months, the Indian men’s team suffered two whitewashes in Tests at home. What ails us in red ball cricket?You have to consider important things. One is that three seasoned cricketers – Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Ravichandran Ashwin – have quit Test cricket. New players are coming to the lineup. So currently the Indian team is going through a transition. It will take some time to regain our position as the No. 1 Test team in the world.Will the BCCI take any decisions after this debacle at home in South Africa?BCCI does not respond to knee-jerk reactions. We are proceeding according to our long-term plan. Winning or losing is part of the game. We don’t make changes every now and then. If any change is required, we will call at the end of the period.Nowadays, Indians are very troubled by foreign spinners on tracks where our spinners look ineffective. what needs to be done?We definitely need to do some soul searching and there will be some discussion about that. We will certainly visit this aspect, whether our best batsmen are less comfortable playing spin these days. A lot of touring spinners have been very successful here. Be it last year’s New Zealand series (October-November 2024, India lost 0-3) or now the South Africa series, their spinners are doing their job very well. But what is worrying is that our best batsmen cannot cope with it. We have our expert teams, cricket commissions and we will definitely highlight this aspect in the discussions.Your thoughts on BCCI coming up with new test venues while many players and pundits feel that test cricket should be played only in traditional centres…India is a huge country compared to England or Australia. If you look at the Indian cricket ecosystem about 20 years ago, before the MS Dhoni era, all the players in the national team were basically from metropolitan cities. And once Dhoni broke that bond and became captain for a long time, players started coming from small towns. We want diversification. We don’t want to centralize all cricket activities into four or five cities. That’s why we’re expanding the game.But we have only five venues in the country for the T20 World Cup…Yes, we are limiting it to five big centers with heritage and history because the ICC only want us to have five venues due to logistical issues. If it was 15, we could add maybe Guwahati or Ranchi or Indore or Mohali or Dharamshala or any other places. When we have the scope to expand, we can have more venues like World Cup 2023. We had 10 venues including Kochi and Guwahati for practice games.Congratulations for bringing Test cricket to Guwahati. But after five days of playing, what do you think of the match?It is a big thing for North East to have Guwahati as a testing ground. Once you have a Test venue, it means that your overall infrastructure and overall culture of cricket is complete. And I am very grateful to the BCCI, even though I am a part of it, and also to the ICC for allowing this part of the country to have a Test venue. Special thanks to ICC Chairman Jay Shah for his support and unwavering leadership in the development of cricket across the North East.What are the BCCI’s plans to further boost the growth of women’s cricket?We are going to increase the contract value of our centrally closed female cricketers. We are talking about having more tournaments in the multi-day format in the coming seasons and our team playing more bilateral matches in the longer format.
