Board assures 'best possible pitches' for domestic cricket

'We will be identifying the best few wickets in the country and be using these for important matches ... going away from the rotation system' - Niranjan Shah © AFP

In a policy shift that should be welcomed by the players and the cricket fraternity at large the Board of Control for Cricket in India is taking positive steps to ensure that key domestic matches in the next season of the domestic cricket will be played on the "best possible pitches."

After every tour of South Africa or Australia, where India's batsmen inevitably struggle on hard, bouncy pitches, the calls for preparing sporting wickets in domestic cricket reaches a fever pitch. This time, though, it seems as though the Board is keen to do something to improve the quality of pitches key matches are played on.

Niranjan Shah, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, revealed that plans were in place to play key matches on neutral venues that would be picked from the best of the strips available in the country. "We will be identifying the best few wickets in the country and be using these for important matches like Duleep Trophy, Irani Cup, Deodhar Trophy and semi-finals and finals of the Ranji Trophy, going away from the rotation system," said Shah. "These matches will be played on neutral grounds, which have the best wickets. This will be from next season onwards because the constitution has to be amended to make this possible."

The board has earmarked Chennai, Baroda, Rajkot, Mohali and Nagpur as wickets that are among the best at the moment, and hope that taking the best games to these venues will spur other state associations into action.

This is a big shift from the current system, where matches are allotted purely on a rotation basis, and often crucial games end up being played on flat wickets that are unsuitable to yielding results. Another concern is that home sides prepare pitches that overly suit themselves, extracting undue advantage.

The Board has been talking for a while now about improving the pace and bounce of domestic pitches, and even relaid numerous strips all across the country about five years ago. However Shah said that this was a process that would take time and expecting instant results was unrealistic. "We had a meeting of pitch and ground committee in Mumbai only recently. If you see, in the last two years, the wickets are improving. It's not a fast process where you can get big changes in one year," said Shah. "Take Rajkot - it used to be a very flat track. But since we've followed the guidelines given by the experts from New Zealand in 2002 the wicket has improved. Fast bowlers have had tremendous success, spinners have succeeded, that's because the wickets have bounce."