It is unusual for a match referee to take a close look at the wicket during Tea on the opening day. Richie Richardson, the match referee for the Eden Test, did so on Friday along with reserve umpire Jayaraman Madanagopal after some scooted and few jumped alarmingly.
A crumbling Eden surface has contributed to 26 wickets falling over the first two days of the Test. Bowlers have utilised the cracks when bowling from the Club House End.
“The pitch is straight from one end, turning and bouncing from the other,” Axar Patel said at the end of the second day. “To be honest, we didn’t expect the wicket to deteriorate so quickly, you know, looking at it the day before the game, even morning of the game,” said India bowling coach Morne Morkel.
A match which had promised to be exciting has robbed the paying spectators and contributed to a hurried climax. Sharp turn and uneven bounce have exposed the mediocrity of most batters, while bowlers have feasted on the conditions.
A few days before the start, CAB president Sourav Ganguly had gone on record saying that the team management hadn’t requested a turner. However, it is understood that
since their arrival, Gatam Gambhir and Shubman Gill have been insisting on a spinning wicket.
Sujan Mukherjee, the CAB curator, had been overseeing the preparations and was joined by BCCI’s chief curator Ashish Bhowmick three days before the start. There is talk that the pitch had been selectively watered and rolled, once Bhowmick took charge, and this “differential preparation” led to its poor quality.
The team management’s muddled thinking was also responsible since they had tried to restore balance between bat and ball, post the Kiwi debacle, during the two Tests against the West Indies. But then why this inclination to roll out spin-friendly decks?
The endeavour to turn a slow turner into a vicious one which would earn the home team some valuable WTC points has backfired.
But will the Eden Gardens wicket pass the quality test when Richardson sits down to make his markings?
Harmer said he had seen “worse surfaces on the 2015 tour”.