Pitching for 'home' advantage

In recent times there has been a lot of talk about preparing sporting pitches in India. Some of the best Indian pitches have been relaid in the hope that the tracks become quicker and have more bounce. But why are we re-laying the pitches at our Test match centers?

Playing 'away' from home means battling not only against the weather conditions and the crowd but also the different pitch conditions. It is because of these very factors that winning 'away' is always regarded as the true test of a team's ability.

There is a big hue and cry when India asks for spinning tracks to be prepared at 'home' but no one seems to realise that India gets exactly the same kind of treatment abroad. The pitches they bat on are quick, with an ample covering of grass, something they are not used to seeing at home.

So, instead of relaying the Test pitches and giving the visiting teams an easy time, we should instead go ahead and first change the pitches we play our domestic cricket on. This way, the players at the grassroot level get accustomed to quick pitches, while at the same time we do not concede the 'home' advantage.

There is a reason why people fear coming to India and call it the 'final frontier'. It is because the challenge of winning in India is evidently greater than in any other part of the world, and teams need to rise above the ordinary to win.

Great teams will win anywhere regardless of the weather and pitch conditions; they will give it their best shot; they will adapt and eventually conquer. Australia does this consistently, which is why they are regarded as the best team in the world -- indeed one of the best ever.

The joy of watching great bowlers and batsman struggling to come to terms with the wicket in alien conditions, to start with, and then eventually coming out with flying colours cannot be matched by an innings or a bowling performance in conditions they know well. In the same vein, a Dravid century in England or one by Sachin Tendulkar in South Africa is highly regarded as was Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble's performance in the recent Test win at Headingley, against England.

If all the pitches were pretty much similar, the entire cricketing world would seem like one massive domestic league. What would separate the chaff from the wheat; the men from the boys?

The International Cricket Council regulations do not allow home teams to prescribe to groundsmen how they should prepare their pitches. The New Zealand cricket board has gone ahead and done exactly that for the second Test at Hamilton. No, there is nothing wrong with them doing that; they are the home team and they certainly deserve the right to have an advantage over the visitors.

Let home teams prepare the toughest pitches possible, because all that adds to the unpredictability of the game and makes it all the more engrossing. If all the pitches were the same, one of the great challenges of international cricket would no longer exist.

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Mail Ashish Magotra