Pitch Curator Unhappy With Parthiv Patel’s Complaint During Ranji Trophy Quarter-Final
Dec 24, 2016 at 5:22 PM
A very rare incident happened in the third quarter-final of the 2016/17 Ranji Trophy between Gujarat and Odisha. At the Sawai Mansingh stadium in Jaipur, Gujarat were batting at 9/2 at the end of 17 overs, finding it hard to tackle the Odisha bowlers. After the completion of 17th over, Gujarat skipper Parthiv Patel – who has made a dazzling comeback into the Indian Test side after eight long years – found the wicket unsuitable and reported it to the match officials.
The complaint was taken seriously by the umpires and the match was stopped for a few minutes. However, the pitch curators at the Sawai Mansingh stadium were unhappy with the complaint, terming the same as bogus. Pitch curator Taposh Chatterjee stated there was nothing wrong with the pitch as he quoted: “It was only after 17 overs a ball from short of good length rose to sit on the arm of the batsman. It’s a normal course. A pitch can never be judged after so many overs.
“How come after 102 balls you say the pitch is wet. There can be some moisture because of which one or two odd balls must have come up but that isn’t a criterion to halt the game. Even then the umpires stopped the play because of the injury but it resumed after 15 minutes and after that match went off well.
“It’s a four day game and little bit of moisture will be there on a sporting wicket and moisture decides what the team will choose to do after winning the toss. Why didn’t they judge the pitch at the start of the game, why after 17 overs?
“I have prepared pitches for over 300 matches and have come across such a thing for the first time. Certainly it was an over-reaction.”