The talk about pitches had started well before Australia left for India and it is continuing as the two teams are preparing for the fourth and final Test, which will be starting here on Thursday.
India are leading the series 2-1 and need to win the fourth Test to secure a place in the WTC final while Australia would like to win the match to finish the series 2-2 and return home with a lot of pride.
With so much at stake for both teams, the pitch for the fourth Test at the Narendra Modi Stadium here was under focus when India head coach Rahul Dravid came in for a pre-match press conference.
The Indian coach was surprised when told that the curator has kept two strips under cover and said he had no idea why that was so.
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"I don't know why two strips are covered. I never asked him why he covered the other one, but I don't know what that was. But yeah, I mean, I think we're playing on this one, so I don't know what, I have no idea what the other one (is covered)," said Dravid.
Dravid said that he only had a look at the pitch that would be used for the Test.
"It looks OK to me. And I mean, I think whatever the wicket is, it honestly doesn't matter. There's just a lot of talk about pictures all the time. They're the same for both teams," said the former India captain.
The coach said every pitch has some challenges for the players -- sometimes for the bowlers, and other occasions for the batters. But added that players have to learn to play on them.
"Sometimes it does get more challenging. It is more challenging for the bowlers at times, it's more challenging for the batsman at times. You know, wickets are like that. Whatever it is. We have to learn to play on them, we have to learn to adjust, and we've played on some challenging wickets overseas as well," said Dravid.
He said that there is no pitch that will satisfy everyone.
"We played on some wickets in South Africa recently where the spinner was completely taken out of the game. So you know, like I said, I mean you know everyone's trying to produce wickets that eventually you want results in these games because you know and that's natural.
So you will be looking to produce wickets where the ball probably has a bit more sway over the bat and when that happens at times you know it can slightly move. The thing I wouldn't necessarily that happens. It's part of the game," Dravid said.
4th Test: India need to work on both batting and bowling, says Dravid
India have to improve both in its batting and bowling during the fourth Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy as the team wants to win the match and qualify for the World Test Championship final without the help of others, said head coach Radhul Draivd on Tuesday.
India had won the first two Tests at Nagpur and New Delhi but lost the third in Indore and are leading the series 2-1 going into the fourth and final match of the series.
"We will have to work both on batting and bowling (departments). If you see the Indore Test, 109 runs in the first innings was not good enough. If we had scored 60-70 runs more, it would have been good. We also allowed them a few extra runs in the first innings in that situation and those conditions. So we will have to do better in both the areas of the game," Dravid said in a pre-match press conference here.
Asked how he as a coach judges the players' performances on challenging wickets, Dravid said he will have to be realistic about what is a good performance on such wickets.
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"It's just really about being realistic about what is a good performance on some of the challenging wickets that we are playing on. Not only here, but I think over the last many matches. I mean I think if you look at the last three or four years all over the world, I think wickets have generally, you know I think, got a lot more challenging.
So you just have to be realistic about what the benchmarks are now, what the standards are, just understand that even in these kinds of games," he said.
A really good performance can change the game and we saw that with Rohit (Sharma in Nagpur). We've seen that many times over here. So yeah, I think it's just being realistic in our assessment of our batsmen and their averages and their numbers and we don't really look so much into it," he added.
