'No practice games needed at Kotla'

"I have 18 years of experience of preparing pitches. I am giving the guarantee that the track would be fine for the match," curator Probir Mukherjee has said.

Dismissing concerns by his committee chief, curator Probir Mukherjee has said the brand new pitch at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium — the venue of the April 17 India-Pakistan one-dayer — doesn't need any more practice matches to test its character.

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"The pitch is fine for a one-dayer, and there is no need to play any more practice matches on it," curator Mukherjee, a member of the Grounds and Wickets Committee (GWC), said.

Venkat Sundaram, chairman of the GWC of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), however, had said last week that "more matches need to be played" to help the pitch and ground settle down.

But Mukherjee, who is also the chief curator of Kolkata's Eden Gardens, emphatically said that no matches were required to be played to remove doubts about the likely behaviour of the virgin pitch on April 17.

"I have 18 years of experience of preparing the Eden Gardens pitch. I am giving the guarantee that the pitch would be fine for the match, and that there's no need of playing any more practice matches on it," he claimed.

The first match that was played on the newly laid pitch on March 12 was the one between the Bar Association and the judiciary. It was played after overnight rains, with the pitch being covered by a thin carpet.

The second match played on the pitch was an under-21 tie on March 21, the day Sundaram expressed "concern" after inspecting the pitch and having watched a part of the match.

There was a proposal for "some more local matches" to be played to remove all doubts about the behaviour of the pitch for the big match that will be witnessed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and a host of other dignitaries.

The organisers of the match, Delhi and District Cricket Association, need to be careful because the International Cricket Council (ICC) has the power to ban a venue, on the basis of a report by its match referee, if a pitch is likely to cause injury to players with its variable bounce.

That had happened in India in 1997 when an India-Sri Lanka One-Day International at Indore was stopped after just 18 deliveries were bowled.

After the Sri Lankan batsmen complained of uneven bounce, ICC match referee Justice Ahmed Ebrahim stopped the match.

Subsequently, the ICC banned the venue for a few years on the basis of Ebrahim's report.