Ahmedabad: Underneath the burlap and tarpaulin was a green-looking patch of bitumen, with a round of mowing yet to be done. India’s first match in the Super 8 tournament against South Africa will be played on Sunday on a pitch made up of a mixture of red and black soil. Next to the black-soil pitch used in the India-Netherlands match that made batting hard work, the hybrid pitch could be relatively more friendly to batsmen. A lot will also depend on weather conditions; A sharp difference in temperature can activate the dew factor.
Pitches were central to talks during the league stage, as stickier pitches made it difficult to reach boundaries. For Indian batsmen who were accustomed to feasting on their bowlers in the previous two series against South Africa and New Zealand, they had to make adjustments.
India’s bowling coach Morne Morkel explained that batting according to the conditions was a conscious effort, especially after the collapse against the USA in the opening match where they were reduced to 77/6 before recovering. In the following matches, even after a misfire in the middle overs, powerful batsmen Shivam Dube and Hardik Pandya managed to cover and post competitive totals.
Abhishek bowls with a light batting net
In Friday’s training session, Hardik and Suriya spent a lot of time trying to extract Yorkies from off-spinners coming around the wicket for six. Likewise, Abhishek Sharma has joined forces with Axar Patel to challenge the right-handed batsmen with the traditional slow left-arm spin. The batsmen tried to position themselves to face spin from Aiden Markram, Keshav Maharaj and George Linde.
Concentrated by his three consecutive misses, Abhishek did not bother to have a long session hitting the net. Lest this complicate matters in his mind. Tilak Varma, who had struggled against slow bowlers throughout the league phase, tried to bat more freely against the spinners.
Morkel suggested some tired wickets in play might be the result of a long domestic season, but they were happy to adapt. “It’s very important to have people who can sum up the conditions well. The importance of that is communicating the even score and the type of balls we want to bowl on the surface. “I think so far in this tournament we’ve done a really good job of batting and bowling,” he said. “Except for the first match, I think it wasn’t a surface over 200 metres, maybe a 170 surface, and we came out very aggressive at the start.
While Ishan Kishan covered Abhishek Sharma’s failure to fire at the top, the Indian pacers felt the pressure the most in the middle. Their scoring average (7.55) was poor and their point-ball percentage (34.2) was alarmingly high.
“You’re going to have different conditions and different challenges. Sometimes you’re going to have a headwind, sometimes a good surface, sometimes it’s going to be difficult. That’s why we tell the players in training that it’s not just about hitting 65 sixes,” Morkel said.
“I think it’s important that we don’t just have tunnel vision and be one-dimensional – we’ll try to score 300 or 250 runs every game. Yes, the mentality is there to take over the bowling, but still have the intelligence about how you’re going to build it and how you’re going to put the score on the board.”
