‘Match referee can talk about pitches, doesn’t matter I agree or…': Rahul Dravid on ICC's 'poor' rating for Indore pitch
India head coach Rahul Dravid, who has been at the forefront of pitch inspection before the start of every Test of this Border-Gavaskar series, echoed captain Rohit Sharma's views of not putting too much emphasis on turning tracks. Dravid, in fact, defended the Indore track which was heavily criticised by ICC referee Chris Broad.
There have been some outstanding performances from the players of India and Australia in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy. India's Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, and Ravichandran Ashwin have been superb while Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy, Matthew Kuhnemann and Usman Khawaja have led the way for Australia. Despite all this, the pitch seems to be the most talked-about element before every Test of the series. After the third Test match in Indore ended in two days and a session in Australia's favour and the pitch used got a "poor" rating from the ICC, the interest around the pitch for the fourth and final Test of the series in Ahmedabad naturally became huge.
India head coach Rahul Dravid, who has been at the forefront of pitch inspection before the start of every Test of this Border-Gavaskar series, echoed captain Rohit Sharma's views of not putting too much emphasis on turning tracks. Dravid, in fact, defended the Indore track which was heavily criticised by ICC referee Chris Broad.
"I won't go too much into it. The match referee is entitled to make his opinion, share his thoughts on the pitch. It doesn't matter whether I agree with his reading or not. With WTC points at stake, you are looking to play on wickets that produce results. Sometimes it can be difficult to get that balance perfectly right. That has happened not only in India but a lot of other places as well," Dravid said in the pre-match conference on Tuesday in Ahmedabad.
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"The fifth ball of the match broke through the pitch surface and continued to occasionally break the surface providing little or no seam movement and there was excessive and uneven bounce throughout the match,” Broad had said in his report for the Indore pitch.
The pitches in the India vs Australia series so far have been spin-friendly to say the least. None of the three Tests have gone on till Day 4. There has been only one century - from Rohit Sharma in Nagpur and only seven half-centuries.
The highest total in the series so far is India's 400 in the first innings in Nagpur while Australia crossed the 200-run mark only once in the six times that they have batted.
Defending the Indian pitches, Dravid said wickets all over the world have gone challenging over the past three-fours and every team wants to win keeping the World Test Championship in mind.
"There's a lot of talk on the pitches all the time. It is the same for both teams. Sometimes it gets more challenging for bowlers, at times it will get more challenging for the batters. Whatever the wickets are we have to learn to play on them, we have to learn to adjust. We played on certain wickets overseas, in South Africa recently, where the spinners were taken out of the game. As I said, everyone is trying to produce wickets that will give results. That's natural," the former India captain said.
When asked about the areas the team needs to work on, Dravid said 60-70 more runs in the first innings in Indore could have made the difference for India.
"109 was a bit low. If we had scored 60-70 more runs then the things could have been different. And We also I think gave away a few more runs to them in the first innings. We have played good cricket in this series, we have to repeat our performances in the first two Tests," he added.
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