Nothing official, but DDCA readies for a fight

While no one would comment on whether the DDCA would look at legal options if the Kotla was suspended as an international cricket stadium and removed as a World Cup venue, another top official told the HT that the DDCA had a “very good case” if it came to fighting a ban, Kadambari Murali Wade reports.

Here’s what a Monday evening meeting of the Delhi & Districts Cricket Association’s executive committee concluded: The blame for Sunday’s pitch fiasco rests squarely with the BCCI’s now-sacked Gounds and Pitches committee chairman, Daljit Singh.

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The crux of the explanation the DDCA will give the Indian cricket board is that they called in Daljit, the “best available BCCI expert consultant”, for the job. They will say that he was given that task a year and a half ago and ask how they alone can now be penalised for his failure.

The part where they admit they messed up: In not having “knocking” or conducting practice games on the pitch. But, here’s the excuse again.

A senior executive member pointed out that of the eight Kotla wickets, the second was used for the Australia game on October 31 and the central pitch (the fourth) for the Sri Lanka game. “Everyone saw the Australia game. If there was a problem with the second wicket, then why did someone else not protest this wicket in advance?” he asked.

And there’s more. If, despite a damning November pitch report from the International Cricket Council, the BCCI, the DDCA’s parent body, did not raise any red flags, then why should they have been worried?

Incidentally, this was the last meeting of the committee in its current avatar. At 9am on Tuesday, an AGM will “elect” eight new directors (to the 24-member committee) while elevating four of the current 12 to the post of additional joint secretaries.

What is interesting about this is that in typical DDCA style, all eight directors have already been decided, as have the four who will be elevated.

As no one is quite sure what work the current four joint secretaries do precisely, the addition of four more (to take executive committee office-bearers to 16, in addition to an entire 10 -member Sports Working Committee), this gives the phrase ‘top-heavy’ new meaning.

While no one would comment on whether the DDCA would look at legal options if the Kotla was suspended as an international cricket stadium and removed as a World Cup venue, another top official told the Hindustan Times that the DDCA had a “very good case” if it came to fighting a ban.

The International Cricket Council match referee’s report has called the pitch “unfit”, the worst possible classification for a venue, but the official insisted that this verdict was unfair: “Out of the 142 balls bowled in Sunday’s ODI, only four to five were rising deliveries. If that kind of bounce makes a pitch ‘unfit’, then New Zealand (the reference being to the bounce in wickets when India played New Zealand earlier this year), should also have been deemed unfit.”

Pitches tended to play differently, he added. “Everything can’t be Rajkot, where 800 runs can be scored in one day.”

The DDCA meanwhile, is calling in “independent local consultants” to take a look at what went wrong. One of the things they will look at is whether the choice of grass made a difference. “Daljit Singh opted for winter grass for the Delhi wicket, as grass doesn’t grow in Delhi in winter,” said an official.

One of those ‘independent’ experts is likely to be the former Board of Control for Cricket in India pitch committee chairman Venkat Sundaram, who incidentally, had washed his hands off DDCA affairs a couple of years ago.