The pitch used for the third Test of the recently-concluded series between India and England has been awarded the ‘Average’ rating by the International Cricket Council. This average rating will save the Narendra Modi Stadium and its parent board the Gujarat Cricket Association from any sort of sanctions from the global governing body of the game.
The third Test of the series was finished within two days with the teams batting only 48.4 overs, 53.2 overs, and 30.2 overs in the first three innings with spinners such as Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Joe Root along with Jack Leach running riots among the opposition batsmen.
The pitch received a lot of criticism for providing a lot of assistance to spinners very early in the Test match, and hence this average rating by the ICC will serve it well going forward. Interestingly, the pitch used in the final Test of the series which was played at the same venue has been rated as Good’ by the ICC.
Before the third Test of the series, the pitches in the first two Tests had also attracted different sets of criticisms. The pitch in the second game assisted spinners from the word go, while the pitch used in the first game did not offer any sort of help to any kind of bowlers and was degraded by the hosts calling it ‘as flat as a road.’
However, the MA Chidambaram Stadium has got away with those surfaces with the ICC rating the surfaces as ‘Very Good’ for the first Test and ‘Average’ for the second game of the series.
India lost the first game of the series by a big margin, but went on to bounce back and won the next three games to defeat England by 3-1 and booked a place for themselves in the finals of the World Test Championship.