We would be poor sports to claim the pitch is the difference in Chennai... England have been second best

SAM MORSHEAD: With England’s top order falling like wheelie bins in a seafront storm, and defeat looking inevitable, early risers back home became increasingly irate with this Chepauk track’s spin-friendly nature

India v England: 2nd Test scorecard

When is a pitch “poor”, and when does it simply exaggerate home advantage? In the case of the ragbowl in Chennai, it might just be a case of both at the same time.

With England’s top order falling like wheelie bins in a seafront storm, and defeat looking inevitable, early risers back home became increasingly irate with this Chepauk track’s spin-friendly nature.

What had been obvious from the first morning, when Stuart Broad and Olly Stone took less than half-an-hour to create substantial rough, was made glaringly clear when India’s tweakers got to have a go on Sunday.

Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav all generated sizeable turn, and substantial bounce, from a surface which continued to leap like topsoil on a trampoline when the ball hit a good length. 

On commentary, the former Indian spinner Murali Kartik - born in Chennai and with nearly 50 appearances for his country to his name - said he had never seen a playing surface quite like it.

“It was almost like powder,” Kartik explained. “There were pebbles on it.”

England’s batsmen, not equipped with years of experience on subcontinental dustbowls and facing the additional strain of a raucous and emotional home crowd leaping on their backs at the first sign of weakness, did not deal with the substantial task at hand. 

^{India dominated proceedings on day two in Chennai}

While Rohit Sharma and Rishabh Pant used their feet to combat Jack Leach and Moeen Ali, England seemed stuck in the crease, lunging into the forward defence or sweeping awkwardly: a perilous task in the conditions.

Shane Warne, who felt England shipped more than 100 too many first-innings runs, highlighted the difference in approaches between the sides.

“When batsman sweep, most of the time it means they have no other option as scared to their use feet,” he wrote on Twitter. 

“The odd innings it works, but not consistently over a long time. Playing spin you have to use the crease, your feet, plus punish the loose ball - that’s how you put pressure on the spinner.”

But was this a case of England simply being second best, or was India’s home advantage made unfair by the pitch itself?

Such was the nature of this strip, there is a fair argument that both teams enjoyed very similar conditions in their respective first innings. 

Remember, Virat Kohli - the finest batsman of a generation - was bowled on the drive by a ragging delivery from Moeen Ali which jagged back through bat and pad to take middle and leg on the first morning. Jack Leach, too, generated rip and bounce. 

Yet, once the ball softened somewhat in India’s first innings, the home side were able to settle.

England leaked runs on the first afternoon, when Rohit and Ajinkya Rahane were able to manipulate the strike without a great deal of resistance to put together the only partnership of substance across two days - a stand which already seems match-defining. India's first-innings total of 329 was only marginally below the all-time Test average at the Chepauk of 344.

Contrastingly, only Ben Foakes managed to enter any kind of groove in England's reply.

Whereas India’s spinners tied England down, reducing boundary opportunities and keeping the run rate low, England’s were not as restrictive: by the end of the two teams' first innings here, the tourists’ spinners had bowled more than five times more full tosses (36) in the series than their counterparts in the India line-up. 

In the Channel 4 studio, former England captain Andrew Strauss said: “Looking at how the wicket played yesterday, what happened today was not unexpected.

“I thought if England could get over the new-ball period, the ball gets softer and if it does turn and bounce it does not do quite as much.

“All credit to India’s bowlers, they exploited the conditions perfectly.”

Still, though, the ICC pitch report will be awaited with interest.

Whether the curators in Chennai can hand on heart claim their strip was prepared with five days in mind is debatable, but then there is nothing in the ICC guidance which directly addresses that point.

ICC playing regulations say a pitch should be marked as poor by assessors if it “does not allow an even contest between bat and ball”. Among the examples of how that might happen, the ICC guidelines say a poor pitch would offer “excessive assistance to spin bowlers, especially early in the match”.

“Excessive” - a vague quality by itself - is later quantified in the same ICC document as “too much” in a gloriously opaque clarification, akin to simplifying quantum mechanics by teaching it in Klingon. 

“It is acceptable for a pitch to offer some degree of turn on the first day of a match, particularly in the subcontinent, though anything more than occasional unevenness of bounce at this stage of the match is not acceptable,” the document continues. 

“It is to be expected that a pitch will turn steadily more as a match progresses, and it is recognised that a greater degree of unevenness of bounce may develop.”

One line is very clear, though: “In no circumstances should the pitch ‘explode’.” The puffs of dirt which have pranced and danced on a length in this Test may come back to bite the curators once the ink is dry on the assessment.

The BCCI are not strangers when it comes to excessively spin-friendly pitches.

^{England's batsmen were stuck sweeping}

In the past 13 years, three venues have received “poor” ratings from the ICC.

In Kanpur in 2008, the ball spun and leaped from the first session as South Africa were beaten inside three days.

In Nagpur in 2015, South Africa were bowled out for 79 and 185, and 33 of the 40 wickets to fall in the match went to spinners. Proteas batsman Hashim Amla described the pitch as “probably the toughest” of his career.

And in Pune in 2017, on a wicket described as “the surface of Mars” by Warne, Australia won thanks to match figures of 12-70 by Steve O’Keeffe, the best by an overseas spinner in India. At the time, local media reports suggested the playing surface had been doctored with metallic brushes.

We will have to wait to see if Chennai 2021 is added to the list.

India will counter, with some weight, that they would not expect to be gifted a dusty surface at Headingley or Trent Bridge - and the Lord’s debacle of 2018, when they crashed to an innings defeat in 170 overs on a green deck under apocalyptic skies, is a recent example of when the shoe was on the other foot.

That is not excusing this Chennai surface, it is to accept that cricket is different in different parts of the world. And in this particular instance, conditions have not been unfairly different for the two teams; one side - the one you would expect given the environment - has performed better. It is possible both for this to happen and for the wicket to be disappointing.

England are not in the position they are in just because of the pitch. We’d be poor sports not to acknowledge that.

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