Chauhan happy but coaches see hitch in pitch

When the match ended this evening, there was one Indian happy and relieved. Chetan Chauhan had been under relentless pressure, in the public...

When the match ended this evening, there was one Indian happy and relieved. Chetan Chauhan had been under relentless pressure, in the public spotlight, for the past few weeks over the state of the Kotla pitch. Today, he believed his efforts were vindicated.

‘‘That the match was played on the Kotla wicket and played well is a slap in the face of my detractors’’, Chauhan said after the match.

Chauhan admitted that the bounce was a touch lower than usual today, and agreed that an experiment of spraying fertilizers backfired and the top

soil of the wicket will be replaced with a fresh one soon.

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‘‘India committed hara-kiri and Pakistan scored 300 runs, so the wicket wasn’t bad. Yes, the bounce was maybe 3-5 inches low than normal and there was more wear and tear over the wicket. To be fair we didn’t get enough time to prepare over the last two days due to restrictions.’’

However, the pitch came in for severe criticism from both coaches. John Wright said the toss was more important here than in any of the earlier matches.

Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was more scathing: ‘‘The pitch was a minefield in the second half’’, he told this paper. He said it had crumbled when he examined it on saturday and he’d told Inzamam that whoever won the toss would win he match.

In time, perhaps, the BCCI will rue awarding the match to Kotla given that the DDCA really had no time to prepare a pitch; weeks instead of months. Maybe today was nature’s way of taking a stand.