A lot of questions have been asked about the Indian pitches as Australia will be taking on the hosts for the final time in the series with the fate of the tournament hanging in the balance. Rahul Dravid, the Indian coach was absolutely not accepting any of those remarks about the Indian pitches. He made it clear that it was not his responsibility to look at the pitches and judge them. His job is to coach the Indian cricket team.
As India awaits Australia for the final Test and they somewhat need to secure a mandatory victory from the series finale to qualify for the WTC final that is slated to happen later in the year, Dravid made it very loud and clear that either Australia battles India hard or their excuses can be entertained later.
In the pre-match conference, Rahul Dravid said, “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.”
Chris Broad said in his match-report for the third Test, “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.”
Dravid shunted the critics, stating, “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.”
He concluded by saying, “109 was a bit low. If we had scored 60-70 more runs then the things could have been different. And We also I think gave away a few more runs to them in the first innings. We have played good cricket in this series, we have to repeat our performances in the first two Tests.”
