Neutral venues for Ranji Trophy brought its own dynamics with it. Teams had to rework their strategies, burn midnight oil. After all, they had to reckon without home advantage. And playing in one’s own backyard is a huge factor in cricket. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with the home-away concept. After all, both teams have an equal opportunity to cash in on familiar conditions.
But then, things went wrong when stark turners or outrageously seaming tracks were produced to suit the host’s need. It created an unfair contest between bat and ball.
Playing on under-prepared tracks — here things are loaded in favour of spinners — does immense harm to cricket and cricketers in the long run even if it suits the immediate interests of the host. The batsmen are short-changed on such viciously turning mine-fields. And the pacemen are considerably marginalised. In fact, teams, in such conditions, have gone in with only one paceman, packing the eleven with spinners.
It’s a very unhealthy territory to be in. The spinners, rather predictably, pick up a lot of wickets on such tracks, but it’s hard to assess their quality.
In fact, bowling on rank turners stunts the development of spinners. It adversely impacts their growth in the areas of flight, variety and deception.
On a turning track, you bowl flat, hit the right areas and not really impart sufficient revs on the ball. So, despite a bucketful of wickets, you really don’t know how good a spinner is.
Such turners were a rarity in the just concluded Ranji season on neutral venues. And the reasons were simple; the host association had little control over the preparation of the pitch.
Indeed, this was a season where plenty of games, particularly in the North and Eastern parts of the country, were dominated by the seamers.
In fact, out of the top four wicket-takers this season, three were pacemen. Seaming tracks, invariably, have bounce as well and the technically well equipped batsmen can make runs on them.
This also meant making runs had a meaning and a context. They were not meaningless runs on flat decks. Pacemen, often the forgotten lot in Indian conditions, now had their tails up. And the spinners, away from tailor-made conditions, had an opportunity to evolve.
Actually, preparing seaming tracks for Ranji Trophy games is not a bad idea. The batsmen would, gradually, learn the virtues of back-foot play, such a crucial ingredient when taking on quality pacemen. So, when some of these batsmen graduate to the next level and travel abroad, they will be in a much better space, technically, to adapt to the conditions.
Neutral venues do help the selectors to assess talent better. And both teams have an equal chance at a venue away from home.
It can be argued that matches at neutral venues lack atmosphere. But then, this could be a flawed point of view since the stands for Ranji games, even for home games, are largely empty.
On the organisational front, however, things have to get better. Some of the centres did not even have sufficient number of balls!
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