Oz tour of India. Tests & ODIs.
FTB fanboys' squeals can't hide the facts. As always, I was right.K wrote:Might see just that this Test. It's like the 1st Test on the last Indian tour. Overcooked pitch. So it's a shootout. Then SO'K gets 12 wickets. Oz win.K wrote:...
There was nothing wrong with the Delhi pitch. e.g. Look at Axar's innings. Nothing wrong with the Nagpur pitch either. India made 400 on that! How can it be "bad" for batters?? It's just bad for obese flat-track bullies, etc. They get found out.
Journos have said it and they're right. India don't want to produce dustbowl pitches. 'Cos if it's a dustbowl shootout Oz might win. India want to produce pitches that give just enough for spinners to be dangerous. Then they just sit around and watch hopeless FTBs' defective techniques destroyed.
This Test, maybe Kuhnemann does a SO'K. Gets 12 wickets. Oz win?
Normal Indian pitches are much better for India. A 600 1st-innings pitch. Dopey England or Oz batters get 400, think they're heroes. India laugh to themselves, get 600. India bowl out Dopey England or Oz on the 5th day for 150, win by an innings and 50 runs.
But those normal Indian pitches are bad for cricket. For cricket, it's much better if the pitch is overcooked than undercooked. The shamefully flat Oz pitches are an existential threat to the game. But when Brissy has a pitch that is accidentally good for cricket, everyone squeals like pigs.
e.g.
* Broiled Indore pitch backfires on India
'Indore’s overcooked and treacherously turning pitch offered even more for spin bowlers on day one than India’s team management wanted...
According to the host broadcaster, the track at Holkar Stadium offered twice as much turn on day one as Nagpur and a third more than Delhi...'
* 'For Matt Kuhnemann... the pitch was like a carpet rolled out especially for his accurate left-arm spin.
“I could live here and play the rest of my career here, this is awesome,” he laughed. “We just talked about bowling the same ball, owning my space. ...”.'
* '“It did more than we expected,” India’s batting coach Vikram Rathour admitted. ...
“How much that wicket turned, to be fair, the earlier two wickets I don’t think they were bad wickets by any standard, they were wickets which turned, which we prefer. Today it was drier than we expected and we saw that it did more. First day of a Test match it did a lot more than we expected.”'
(Brettig, The Age)
Of course, not sayin' Kuhnemann will def take 12 wickets!! Or that Oz is certain to win.
But Oz has a much better chance with the overcooked pitch. And only folks with amnesia won't have watched Kuhnemann and thought 'bout SOK's 12-for. (But media are running with the story of his QLD nickname 'Jaddu', in honour of Jadeja.)P.S.
'This Test... comes exactly two years after he [Kuhnemann] made his first-class debut, underlining just how raw he is.'
(cricket.com.au)
BTW Oz again couldn't get Axar out cheaply. But he was left n.o. by another crazy Test run out.
Hope Pete, Green and co. make buckets of runs. Of course that'd be great for Oz. It'd also help shut up the FTB fanboys, who whinge and make excuses whenever FTB's defective technique is destroyed. But it's asking a lot of Green. His first innings for the year. And his Player of the Match 77 in Galle (1st Test vs. SL) was in very different batting conditions. He swept a lot. And we've seen what happens to Oz batters when they sweep...
Will Carey keep sweeping?
