Ground staff work on the pitch at the Melbourne Cricket Ground ahead of the Boxing Day Test. (Express Photo)
Boxing Day Test: After two players, including captain Rohit Sharma, were struck while batting in the nets ahead of Thursday’s Boxing Day Test, India may have felt aggrieved that they were given worn pitches to practice on.
However, the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s chief curator Matt Page defended the practice pitches, insisting he had followed the years-old protocol.
In the lead-up to the Boxing Day Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Rohit was struck on the knee and had to pause his practice session for treatment. Later, Akash Deep was also hit, with the bowler citing variable bounce as the reason.
Akash Deep suggested India were practising on the wickets used by Big Bash sides. “We keep getting hit in the nets. That is fine. I think this wicket was for white ball, which is why the ball kept low at times. But these blows are common in training,” Akash Deep said.
However, Page said that was not the case. “For us, three days out, we prepare Test match pitches for here. If teams come and train before that, they get what pitches we have had,” Page was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph. “Today, we are on fresh pitches. If India had trained (Monday) morning, they would have been on those fresh pitches – it’s stock standard procedure for us, three days out.”
Speaking about how the pitch is expected to behave during the Boxing Day Test, Page said it is likely to offer little help for the slow bowlers. “We’ve seen three fantastic Test matches so far on three great pitches. So, for us, it’s trying to do something similar to what we’ve done the past couple of years and create a thrilling contest,” Page said.
Day 1 of the Boxing Day Test is likely to see temperatures touch 40 degrees Celsius. Page said that could lead to him leaving more moisture in the pitch. “It’s (the weather) been factored in … now how far we go, we don’t know. We’ll just monitor – with Melbourne, the weather can change quite quickly,” Page said. “It probably means it might quicken up (in pace) a bit quicker than it would if it was 20C.”
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