India’s wicket ways leave England reeling

Australia’s only hope to be part of the World Test Championship is for England to recover from a pitched disaster in the third Test.

Indian captain Virat Kohli: ‘It was bizarre that out of the 30 wickets, 21 were off straight balls’

Australia will be hoping England can do what it could not in the final three Tests of the Border Gavaskar summer and beat India in the remaining Test.

Supporting England comes as hard for most as it does local republicans, but that’s the only way Australia can make August’s inaugural final of the World Test Championship at Lord’s.

New Zealand is already ensconced and Australia’s only hope of inclusion depends on England winning and denying India a spot in the finals.

It might be as painful for Joe Root’s men to do Tim Paine’s outfit a favour, but the team needs to salvage something after an abject performance with the bat in the third match which ended inside two days and triggered a number of controversies.

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Heading the list of complaints from the match has been the state of the pitch at the new Ahmedabad stadium that saw the visitors bowled out for 112 and 81. Batsmen on both sides struggling against spin from the first session of the game.

Photographs of the deck ahead of the game suggested a selective preparation which would see the area in front of the batsmen break up more.

Australia encountered something similar when ground staff appeared to have raked a similar area ahead of the third day of the 2016 against Sri Lanka in Galle. Photographs obtained by The Australian at the time indicated something was at hand and match referee Chris Broad was seen having a vigorous conversation with the curator on what turned out to be the last day of the match.

An Al Jazeera crew later filmed the curator and others discussing how they doctored the wicket with a wire brush during an alleged match fixing sting.

While there is no suggestion the match in India was fixed the wicket was clearly prepared for a home side which was one-all in the series after being caught out on a seaming wicket in the first match.

The wicket was widely condemned and may yet get a poor rating which could see the stadium banned from hosting international matches if it incurred a similar rating in the next 12 months.

Former captain turned commentator Michael Vaughan was not concerned with technical terms and labelled the wicket “shite”.

“Entertaining, yes, but this is an awful pitch for Test cricket,” Vaughan said. “Complete lottery on day two.”

Andrew Strauss agreed with Vaughan and rejected suggestions from Indian captain Virat Kohli that it had been poor batting.

“Look at Joe Root for a moment. We know he is a great player of spin,” Strauss said. ”He is in great form as well. What did he get — 19 today? Might have been out two or three times en route to getting that score.

“And by the way, that’s day two of a Test match. To say the pitch has no fault to play … Kohli’s looking after the groundsmen there to a certain degree.’’

The Indian captain had no complaints after the game.

“It was a very good pitch to bat on, especially in the first innings,” Kohli said.

“We felt like the ball was coming on nicely with the odd ball turning but it was below-par batting from both teams.

“Our bowlers were much more effective and that’s why we got the result.

“It was bizarre that out of the 30 wickets, 21 were off straight balls.”

Australia was beaten by straight balls in the Sri Lanka series.

Opener David Warner, who scored the majority of the sides runs in the 2016 match.

“You’re sitting ducks when you’re facing six balls in a row — one of them is going to have your name on it,” the opener explained. “People don’t realise that you’re going out here — day one and day two and it’s turning square.”

Root, whose part time off spin earned him 5-8 on the second day, refused to openly criticise the pitch after the game.

“I think that surface was a very challenging one, a very difficult one to play on,” the captain said.

“But it’s not for players to decide if it’s fit for purpose; that’s up to the ICC. I’m paid to play the game, not make those decisions, but it’s something that I’m sure they’ll look at off the back of the last couple of matches.

“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.”

England only picked one spinner for the game while India’s seamers did not get to bowl a single delivery on the second and final day.