The very thought of playing the turning ball was so much on their mind that balls that did not turn did the most damage, as SA Test skipper Hashim Amla admitted.
The South Africans psyched themselves out of the first Test. They may have lost the toss but they had the better of the bowling conditions on a somewhat fresh pitch that had more awkward bounce to offer.
By the time they came to bat the pitch had become a slow turner. There is a simple rule in playing Test cricket in India and that is to make the first innings count. Comebacks are too difficult as the wearing pitches rarely allow greater batting comfort even if the surface slows down even more.
The very thought of playing the turning ball had played so much on their mind that the balls that did not turn did the most damage, as their Test skipper Hashim Amla admitted. The Indian spinners exploited the sliding new ball well ensuring that the visitors could not enjoy the luxury of an even start in the face of small totals. The Proteas lost the mind games long before they bowled the first ball in this series.
Of course, what the Indians did to design the pitch is not right. This is the kind of myopic policy that set Indian cricket back several years in the game. Tailored pitches mean the bowlers are least prepared to work their way through opposition batting on normal pitches abroad. No wonder Indians travel as badly as wine. It is not a valid argument that pitches always favoured home teams in the history of the game.
Cricket’s ladder of merit always saw the best travellers on top and not those who specialise in winning at home.
Teams do tend to take the wicked route out to avenge the Indians’ tactics of designing pitches to suit their spinners. The South Africans once prepared a moisture-laden seaming horror in Kingsmead, Durban to get even with India. To see a powerful Indian batting team bowled out for 100 and 66 was a lesson in why no country should tamper with pitch preparation and thus invite revenge.
Viv Richards warned India that he had a long memory and instructed groundsmen in the Caribbean to prepare nasty tracks on which the Indians would not be able to bat. That led to Indian disasters in 1989.
To tinker with pitches to turn the tables for a young Kohli side is not an outrageous idea.
After all, Dhoni built his reputation doing much the same thing except that he had the great batsmen in his team who in their prime could bat as well abroad. The fabulous Four did the hard work for India abroad gathering the runs aplenty and in style too. Much the same capacity is not yet there in the present lot. But the least Indian cricket can do to them is boost their confidence at least by tilting the odds in their favour.
It is an ugly sight though. The dark looking areas around the batting creases and the motley gray of the Mohali pitch, once famous as the hardest and fastest pitch in the country, along with the dust and dirt flying out as the bat makes contact in digging the low-keeping ball out renders the game in most unattractive tones on television.
I ended up watching more of the ‘Gabba Test as there was not only fantastic strokemaking but also good bowling and clean cricketing action. A spinner also dominated the closing stages in a Test in which Australia seemed set to make 1,000 runs if it wanted and yet won with time to spare despite some rain.
What the ‘Gabba provided was positive cricket whereas at Mohali what we had was negative cricket with a lopsided tilt in favour of slow bowlers. This is for all but the blind to see and still we commit the same old mistakes.
If Team India wants to regain the number one Test slot it must learn to play on normal pitches and win at home as well as abroad. Even a 4-0 win in such conditions as in Mohali would be a Pyrrhic victory.
