A 22 Yard Pitch Cannot Guarantee A 22 Year Career

Nowadays players have started demanding retribution from the home curators. They want the pitches to be prepared in such a way that would suit the home team. Considering the fact that the pitch belongs to the curator, the players cannot demand any kind of favour. If you are playing at the international level then you are bound to deal with different kinds of pitches.

Recently the Australian all-rounder Shane Watson asked the curators to prepare a pitch that would suit his team’s style of playing for the Ind-Aus test series. Such demands should not be made by the players as it hampers the intensity with which the game is played.

Playing test matches is not a cup of tea. You need to be technically sound and should be able to play in every condition given. The habit of playing on fast bowling tracks has made Australia struggle against the spinners, a glimpse of which we saw in the test series against Pakistan. They looked completely clueless in the entire series and struggled against the spinners. The same goes with other teams as well. Team India’s test match performance has been consistently poor in the past few years. Their overseas records tell the story. They are too dependent on spinning tracks. If the ball isn’t spinning then everybody assumes that India is going to struggle.

The curators never question a player about his performance because they know it’s not their job. They take pride in preparing the pitches and put all their efforts to have a 5 day game. The officials should keep a watch on how the pitches are being prepared and must ensure that there is no interference from the players.

It’s a simple rule- you should be prepared with your full syllabus irrespective of how the question paper has been set up. Similarly, these players need to adapt to all sorts of conditions and must not depend entirely on the pitches to prove their mettle.

Legends are not made in a single day, it takes years of labour to be a Lara, a Tendulkar or a Ponting !