Ganguly slams third ODI track

Ganguly slams third ODI track
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

FARIDABAD, MARCH 14: ``You don't have to play well to win on this surface. I am not at all happy with the wicket. It's not an even surface. I'm not worried about grass on the surface as long as it is even. But here we have tufts of grass in some parts while other parts are bare,'' said the skipper on the eve of the third One-Day International (ODI) to be played here on Wednesday.

If you thought that was a typical gripe of a visiting captain, down 0-2 in the five-match series, then you are sadly mistaken. The emphatic condemnation of the track came from the home team captain, Saurav Ganguly.

Ganguly's outburst came after he had inspected the Nahar Singh Stadium track with coach Kapil Dev in the morning.

The Indian think-tank feared that the uneven surface could expose his players to the perils of the South African pace battery. Both Kapil and Ganguly had lengthy discussion with Sarkar Talwar, the former Haryana off-spinner who has been overseeing preparations for the crucial tie.

In contrast, South African skipper Hansie Cronje was guarded in his reactions: ``It's an interesting pitch. There are tufts of grass and the pitch could be two-paced. But the way I saw Ganguly and Kapil Dev talking to the curator, I doubt whether there would be any grass in it on Wednesday,'' Cronje said smilingly.

Curator Talwar, a former Haryana team-mate of Kapil, did not agree with the Indian camp: ``It's a good cricketing pitch.''

Incidentally, in 1998 Kapil -- as the then BCCI's pitches committee chairman --found the conditions here unfit to host the India-Zimbabwe tri-series match. The match was subsequently allotted to Ferozeshah Kotla in New Delhi. Among the reasons cited for holding the ground unfit for an international game were an overused pitch, lack of a second scoreboard, poor maintenance of ground equipment like roller and super sopper and placement of umpires' rooms in the first floor of the pavilion.