The third Test between India and England was supposed to be an iconic one. It was the first at the newly built Motera (renamed Narendra Modi Stadium) in Ahmedabad. It was also only the second day-night Test match in India. The series was nicely poised at 1-1.
However, the match was over inside two days. All it lasted was 140.2 overs which is the least post the second World War. No team went past the 150-run mark as well. The ball turned and bounced from the first session on the first day. And the spinners ended up taking 28 out of the 30 wickets to fall.
Hence, a lot of focus has been on the pitch and its quality. England skipper and part-time off-spinner Joe Root picked up a five-wicket haul as well. In fact, he even joked about him picking up a fifer which shows the state of the pitch.
Yeah, I think it [my five-for] sort of sums up the wicket and gives a fair amount of spin,
Root said in the post-match presentation.
Indian skipper Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma voiced their opinion on the pitch. They felt it was more to do with poor and below-par batting rather than the pitch. They thought it was nothing extraordinary on the pitch.
However, in the post-match online press conference, Root said it wasn’t for the players to decide if the pitch was poor. It is a decision for the ICC to make. He felt the pitch was a very challenging one and the massive Ahmedabad crowd were robbed of some riveting contests.
That’s a very good question, and it’s a tricky one to answer. I think that this surface is a very challenging one, a very difficult one to play on. It’s not for players to decide if it’s fit for purpose. That’s up to the ICC. As players, we have to try to counter it as best we can. It’s a real shame because it’s a fantastic stadium, 40,000 people have come to watch a brilliant, iconic Test match and I feel for them. They came to watch Virat Kohli face Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad, Jack Leach and Ravichandran Ashwin against our top batsmen like Ben Stokes.
I almost feel like they’ve been robbed. Instead, they had to watch me get wickets on there which shouldn’t be the case. That’s a frustration for a lot of people. The fact is it was challenging for both teams and credit to India, they outplayed us on that wicket,
Root was quoted saying when he was quizzed whether this Ahmedabad pitch was up to the Test match standard.
Root also felt that it just wasn’t the pitch, the pink ball played a big role as well. The extra plastic coating made life tough for the batsmen as it came quickly to him after pitching.
I honestly think the ball was a big factor in this wicket. The plastic coating, the hardness of the seam compared to the red SG, meant it almost gathered pace off the wicket. If it hit the shiny side and didn’t hit the seam. A lot of those wickets on both sides, the LBWs and bowleds, were due to being done for pace beaten on the inside. If you look at some of the replays batsmen probably ended up in the right position, but because it was gathering pace off the wicket, it was difficult. Credit to Axar [Patel] in particular, I think he exploited that really well and found a very good method on that surface,
Root explained.
England are not out of the race of the World Test Championship final. However, they do have a chance of squaring the series and win a second Test in the series against India in a weeks’ time. That is something no team has done since the start of 2013.
