It’s green turfs v/s dust bowls

Pakistan has humbled the world’s best side in their surrogate home not just once but twice comprehensively. England suffered the same fate in their 5-0 drubbing against India in the ODI series in October just after they had thumped India in their own backyard in all formats of the game. India has just been burnt down to ashes in Australia. South Africa has also trounced Sri Lanka using the home advantage.

Cricket, to me, has suddenly become a territorial game between the teams of sub-continent and outside the sub-continent barring the minnows. England, Australia and South Africa served India and Sri Lanka with fast, green, bouncy pitches and some rogue fast bowling. Pakistan has greeted England with low, slow and dusty pitches that have plenty in it for the guile and wile of the spinners like Ajmal and Rehman. Understandably, this is the best and the easiest strategy for the teams to register some wins under their belt. England was hailed the truest and the finest test team in the world 6 months ago after they dethroned India. Suddenly, the cricket pundits have been taken aback by the team’s inability to win matches outside the sub-continent.

After the decline of the once “invincible” Aussies, there hasn’t been a single team that has shown the glimpse of being the team that West Indies and Australia were. All of them have been found wanting on alien conditions. Batsmen have been the biggest culprits. They have not been able to bat 90 overs in each innings of a match consistently. There a number of reasons for the current mire the batsmen find themselves in. For India and Sri Lanka and maybe even Pakistan, lack of sporting wickets back home for domestic matches hasn’t enabled the best batsmen in the circuit to fine tune their techniques in all conditions. With the amount of cricket that is being played around now-a-days, there is hardly any time left for the batsmen to practice in domestic games to correct their techniques before leaving for a long sojourn in the alien conditions.

Highlights of the batting woes (only teams in sub-continent v/s teams outside the sub-continent):

• India has lost by an innings 4 times and by a margin of nearly 300 runs twice. (Number of matches played:8)
• Sri Lanka has suffered an innings defeat and a 10 wicket defeat in SA(Number of matches played:3, Overall Series result:2-1)
• England has suffered a 10 wicket loss in the first test match and got bowled out for 72 in the second innings of 2^nd test match.(Number of matches played:2)
• West Indies lost to India by an innings in the 2^nd test match on its tour to India and lost the other match by 5 wickets. (Overall result of a 3 match test series was 2-0)

Well, let’s just hope that the interest of the viewers in cricket does not wane in this polarized world of cricket. Teams and fans should now start pestering their cricket boards to organize continental matches only. Indeed, BCCI has already paid heed to this request…

As an Indian fan, nothing can heal my wounds except a 3-0 win for Pakistan. An irony, isn’t it?