as introduced by Haresh Pandya.
Though known and respected as a "thorough gentleman" among cricket officials, and though he has managed to steer clear of controversies most of the time, Shashank Manohar had invited the wrath of his countrymen, including the media, for giving a green top to the Indian and the Australian teams for the third Test at Nagpur in the late 2004. The Aussie fast bowlers, particularly Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie, made the most of VCA's magnanimity, and devastated the hapless Indian batsmen on the minefield and won the Test by a whopping margin of 342 runs.
He was accused of deliberately preparing such a wicket just to teach a lesson to his political opposition. So much so, some even pilloried him as a traitor. But he brushed aside such charges as "baseless", saying he was not dictated by anyone and had received no instructions whatsoever from the BCCI or the Indian team management. And even if they did, he would not have obeyed, he emphasized.
He revealed that he only acted according to a circular the BCCI had issued in the early 2004. It called for sporting pitches that would have enough bounce to encourage quicker bowers and also improve the strokeplay of batsmen.
Ah yes! The Nagpur test.
So here is Dileep Premachandran on the Nagpur Test
As in October 2004, India picked up seven wickets on an opening day at Nagpur, only this time there was no resplendent batting to take the game away from them, or costly wicketkeeping lapses to intensify their pain. The green-sprinkled surface prepared for that game - in many ways, the beginning of the end for Sourav Ganguly - bore no resemblance to the turgid grassless pitch on show today, though in S Sreesanth and Irfan Pathan, India had two bowlers more than capable of testing a batting line-up without Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick - 10,097 runs and 28 Test centuries between them.
And
K Shriniwas Rao
The first thing that coach Greg Chappell and skipper Rahul Dravid did on reaching Nagpur this afternoon was to visit the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA) Stadium. After the two took a quiet walk alongside the pitch, they exchanged glances,nodded to each other and walked back to where the rest of the team members were waiting for a net session. ‘‘It is a good Test match wicket,’’ was how Chappell described the wicket after the team’s four-hour gruelling practice session ended.
Indeed, the pitch still appears to be the same — flat and brown — as reported in The Indian Express last week after being constantly rolled and watered for the entire past week. There is a certain hardness to the track which, according to chief curator Kishore Pradhan, will remain so until the first couple of days of the match.
And
Rahul BhattacharyaEverything you need to know about the state of both the pitch and the condition of the touring party lies in Duncan Fletcher's remark that England have a "very good chance" of playing two spinners.
