(Cricket news) On this day 1 year ago, Ravichandran Ashwin's all-round brilliance won India the 2nd Test match against England in Chennai. Ashwin picked up 8 wickets in the match including a 5-wicket haul and scored 119 runs including a century in the 2nd innings. India had lost the opening Test but then came back and won the remaining 3 to qualify for the World Test Championship final.
What took the attention away from the excellent cricket that India played was the quality of the pitches which was subsequently taken way out of proportion. Many experts and players including former England captains Andrew Strauss, Alistair Cook and Micheal Vaughan blamed the BCCI and the pitch curators for the 'Bad Pitch', saying that it was the reason that the 5-day pink ball match got over in less than 2 days because it did too much help to the spinners from the very first ball. The 2nd and the 5th Test match got similar treatment as well.
England captain and part-time off-spinner Joe Root took a five-wicket haul in the first innings. Root in the post-match press conference said that him getting a five-wicket haul sums up the pitch. Yuvraj Singh claimed that a wicket where a match gets wrapped up in less than 2 days is not good for Test Cricket.
Axar Patel picked up 11 wickets while Ravichandran Ashwin got 7 wickets while Yuvraj Singh claimed that former Indian spinners Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble would have got 800 or 1000 wickets if they bowled on these kinds of pitches. Commentators Ajit Agarkar and Murli Karthik observed that the balls that did not turn were the ones that got the wickets. Sunil Gavaskar said that the batsmen were way too defensive in their approach which was the reason for their demise and not the pitch while the then Indian captain Virat Kohli claimed that the batters from both sides did not perform up to the standards.
Contradicting to Yuvraj Singh's claim, it is not as if Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble never played on rank turners. Ravichandran Ashwin has a better overseas average than both Harbhajan and Kumble where the conditions are usually seam friendly and require hard work for the spinners. Yuvraj Singh's comment intentionally or unintentionally made it look like both Ashwin and Patel didn't have to do much to get wickets which then makes their achievements look unimpressive
Kevin Pietersen also stated that "I hope there are some England batters waking up this morning and being honest with themselves at least, by acknowledging their batting was dreadful on that wicket?! I’ve heard Virat & Rohit say theirs was!"
England legend Sir Geoffrey Boycott also said that the ICC rules do not state how the pitch should be, so England has to accept that their batting was not good even after they won the toss. Among a lot of legends, Sir Viv Richards said that he was shocked to hear the amount of complaints on the pitch. Ravichandran Ashwin said that a 'good pitch' shouldn't be a thing and seam on day 1, flat on day 2-4 and turn on the last day should not be the standard of wickets. The bowlers are bowling well and the batter needs to work hard to score some runs and Ashwin himself managed to do that with his century.
His Australian counterpart Nathan Lyon said that he would like to see more pitches like these. The spinner said that the players play on seaming tracks all the time but when it starts spinning everyone suddenly has problems. At the end of the day one year later, especially after seeing the state of England's batting it is evident that the visitors didn't bat well and the Indians were also below par. It comes down to why spinning conditions caught so much attention. There is a certain level of mystery but the Indian team have since beaten England in two Tests on seaming conditions with the help of their quicks. One thing is certain that if the same thing ever happens again the outrage of the same people will be similar.
Also read: Debutant Bishnoi spins India to victory in the 1st T20I against West Indies
