India and Australia are set to take on each other in a four-match Test series starting from February 9. The first Test is scheduled to take place at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur. With a spot in the World Test Championship (WTC) Final on the line, both India and Australia are expected to go full throttle from the very first game.
Meanwhile, there has been a lot of debate around the pitch that will be catered to in Nagpur. Several reports have claimed that the curators will be dishing out a rank-turner. A few pictures of the Jamtha pitch have also gone viral on the internet which shows some parity in how it can behave differently for left-handed batters. Australia, who have quite a few southpaws in their squad, surely are not liking these images.
There have been so much criticism but the interesting part is that a final image of the pitch has not been revealed yet. Nevertheless, the visitors’ camp, especially fans and experts back in Australia continue to whine about the Nagpur pitch. Meanwhile, former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan took a dig at those fans by sharing an image of the WACA pitch in 1997 that had multiple massive cracks. “Let’s have a cracking series,” wrote Pathan.
Pat Cummins plays down pitch concerns
While Australia fans and former cricketers continue to criticize India for curating a potential rank turner, their captain Pat Cummins has played down all such concerns saying that these things are part of the game.
"That's part of the challenge of playing away. Home teams want to win at home. In Australia, we're lucky we've normally got pace and bounce. Home match advantage, I don't think it's a terrible thing. It's another challenge and makes touring over here even harder when you know the conditions are custom-made for them," Cummins told reporters.
