Stalwart batsman and current Team India coach Rahul Dravid has refused to assign too much importance to the surface ahead of the fourth and final Test match of the coveted Border Gavaskar series.
Although India have managed to retain the trophy after winning the first two Test matches, the hosts will be looking to avoid a series-levelling loss, and worse, miss qualification for the World Test Championship. Dravid felt that when points in the WTC are at stake, the curators would like to prepare wickets which produce results. Enhance your WTC Final watching experience with attractive betting odds from 1xBet.
“I won’t go too much into it. The match referee is entitled to make his opinion, share his thoughts on the pitch. It doesn’t matter whether I agree with his reading or not. With WTC points at stake, you are looking to play on wickets that produce results. Sometimes it can be difficult to get that balance perfectly right. That has happened not only in India but a lot of other places as well,” Dravid said.
The Indian coach added that it was okay to produce bowling-friendly pitches which produce shorter games, and vice versa. He believed that it was necessary to excel in testing conditions to reach the highest levels of the game.
Dravid further went on to point out that the Indian team has also had to face their fair share of unfavourable wickets, such as the surfaces in South Africa, where the spinners were completely out of the picture. 1xBet Sports Betting Odds are one of the best in the market when it comes to cricket.
“There’s a lot of talk on the pitches all the time. It is the same for both teams. Sometimes it gets more challenging for bowlers, at times it will get more challenging for the batters. Whatever the wickets are we have to learn to play on them, we have to learn to adjust. We played on certain wickets overseas, in South Africa recently, where the spinners were taken out of the game. As I said, everyone is trying to produce wickets that will give results. That’s natural,” the coach added.
The renewed discussion on the playing surfaces is perhaps due to the pitch rating of the Indore Test, which match referee Chris Broad adjudged as poor. Get the best cricket betting odds only on 1xBet.
“The fifth ball of the match broke through the pitch surface and continued to occasionally break the surface providing little or no seam movement and there was excessive and uneven bounce throughout the match,” Broad said in his report to the ICC.
