India vs South Africa: Mohali pitch was perfectly fine, it's time to stop the debate on turning tracks

Dean Elgar ran through the Indian batting on day one of the Mohali Test. At the end of play, he bowled another googly. “It is a wicket that you expect coming to India. It is not a very good cricket wicket. (But) it is a result wicket, which can go either way,” he said, after taking 4 for 33 and helping to bundle India for 201 runs. R Ashwin then provided him with an apt response on day two. After a sedate start, Elgar was looking set in the middle but had been tied down ended up trying to slog Ashwin, only to be caught at backward point. Ashwin mouthed off, and in the press conference later, acknowledged what he had said. “He has played that shot a lot against spin at Johannesburg. I watched his videos on YouTube. I made it a point to tell him that it’s not Johannesburg.” [caption id=“attachment_2501238” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The debate on ‘dust bowls’ in India needs to stop. AFP[/caption] Let it be said here that Elgar wasn’t the only one to play a poor shot. Barring Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara, none of the batsmen on either side showed intent and technique to grind it out on wicket that was doing something. Most of the South African batsmen got out to straight deliveries, thinking more about the turn than countering what was there. There were footmarks on the wicket from day one, but even against Elgar, the India batsmen lacked proper shot selection. Perhaps, among all batsmen, only AB de Villiers can complain that he was outdone by two superb deliveries in the first Test. This puts the whole debate over pitches here in India in perspective. Virat Kohli has a point when he says that ‘there is no talk about pitches when we travel abroad, only talk of poor batting’. Let us rewind to India’s overseas trips in the last two years. They collapsed on a rank turner in Galle, but poor batting was cited as the reason, and fairly. There was not a word about the pitch, and primarily because that is what you come to expect in Sri Lanka after seeing Muttiah Muralitharan spin it like a top all those years. Prior, the only little talk about pitches on the Australia tour happened before the Adelaide Test, when it was said the dry wicket suited the visitors more. Nathan Lyon still made good use of it and spun them to a victory. In South Africa (2013) and New Zealand (2014), there was hardly any pitch talk. Indian pacers made use of conditions in Johannesburg and Wellington, their batsmen performed nevertheless. There wasn’t even a sound. Again, it was so because you expect such conditions whilst travelling. When India landed in South Africa in December 2013, they played the first ODI without a practice match. The conditions at the Wanderers in Johannesburg were alien, and that is an understatement. Cold winds, the ball bounced up to shoulder height, and India struggled. Their bowlers were smacked for 358 runs, and their batsmen found it difficult to score even 220. Rohit Sharma struggled to put bat to ball for 15 consecutive deliveries against Dale Steyn, who told the batsman ‘this is not Mumbai where the ball doesn’t rise above the knee roll’. Similarly, when the green carpet was rolled out at Lord’s in the English summer of 2014, there were no questions asked from the Indian camp. Instead, Ajinkya Rahane played the most special knock of his career so far, and India won. If Test cricket is about a contest between bat and ball, then Mohali too passed that examination. There was spin, there was reverse swing, and two batsmen scored runs in the same manner in both innings, showing the rest how it is done. If the others couldn’t be bothered to put their bats in play, or temper down their aggressive strokes, it doesn’t make the pitch bad. That is the crux of the matter. Nowhere is it written that the ball must not spin from day one, rather it should seam and swing. It isn’t a hard rule that batsmen must make merry, and that spin should only come into play on days four and five. Why is this the perfect template for Test cricket? Where does it say that a Test ought to last five days? We have been fed this nonsense through the years. “It is a fine balance between skill and patience,” Amla had said in the pre-match conference. “If you come to South Africa, you will have a South African kind of wicket. As a player, wherever I go in the world, I expect the conditions to suit the home team. There will be times when you have to play the game in a way that will ensure a result. Sometimes you have to play a slightly defensive game to make sure the result comes a bit later. We all know the game of cricket is a bit like chess.” To his credit, the South Africa skipper focussed on his team’s shortcomings, and Elgar remained the only one to have really spoken out against the pitch at Mohali. So there should be no more questions about turning wickets. There should be no answers sought from the visiting opposition whether they think it is fair. For, there are no right or wrong pitches, just the right or wrong results.