IPL pitch debate grows as neutral curators blunt home advantage

Bengaluru: ​Say Chinnaswamy Stadium and what comes to your mind is the high-scoring surfaces and vociferous fans. While the fans have maintained their decibel levels, the Royal Challengers Bengaluru batters haven’t necessarily found the surface to their liking with its spongy and uncharacteristically tacky nature making life hard for them in the last couple of matches.

The opening two games were the typical run-fest with four innings surpassing 200 and RCB reaching 250/3 against Chennai Super Kings but the last two matches have seen batters, especially at the start innings, struggle to time the ball. They are unable to play the big shots from the get-go with batters being forced to bide their time before opening their shoulders.

In the third match here, LSG huffed and puffed to 146 all out and Royal Challengers galloped to victory in 15.1 overs only because of cameos from Rajat Patidar (27, 13b) and Jitesh Sharma (23, 9) after opener Phil Salt and one-drop Devdutt Padikkal looked ill at ease during their respective stays. Opener Virat Kohli scored a patient 34-ball 49.

It was a similar scenario in the RCB vs Delhi Capitals match on Saturday that ebbed and flowed like a slow-burner before exploding to life in the final over when the visitors' David Miller won the game with two sixes and a four.

Although Royal Challengers haven’t openly expressed their unhappiness over how the wicket has been playing, their displeasure could be sensed. The defending champions rely on their batting – a wonderful cocktail of experience, youth and big-hitters – to do all the heavy lifting, and they are forced to recalibrate their approach in their own den.

“I think it (pitch) has been quite varied,” said Mo Bobat, RCB’s Director of Cricket, after the loss against DC. “Even this season, we've probably had, I think that game against CSK when we got a big score, it was certainly quite spongy and a little bit tacky. But a couple of games on the pitch have been quite low and slow. So we certainly found the first innings today, it was very slow, it wasn't coming on to the bat at all.”

It’s not just RCB who seem to have a gripe with their home advantage being neutralised following BCCI’s decision to appoint neutral curators for all IPL venues since the 2019 season. Five-time champions Chennai Super Kings, who maximised their skills on the spin-friendly Chepauk track, three-time winners Kolkata Knight Riders, whose mystery spinners revelled on the slow Eden Gardens, new entrants Lucknow Super Giants and two-time champions Sunrisers Hyderabad have voiced their frustration over the nature of the pitches and their complete lack of say in getting the desired surface. 

The experiment of appointing neutral curators started off with Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai before being implemented across all venues. While the objective behind it is to ensure fairness, it has practically eliminated the 'home advantage' that franchises enjoyed prior to this move - something which many have openly complained about. Currently every venue has a BCCI-appointed curator who is assisted by a local man.

Pitch preparation is one of the most arduous tasks in cricket where a lot of factors such as rain, temperature, soil etc, come into picture. Although the inputs from a local person helps, eventually the BCCI-appointed man takes the call. 

A former BCCI curator, speaking to DH on conditions of anonymity, felt that for neutral curators to get a grasp of the pitch, they have to spend a considerable amount of time understanding it.

"For any curator working in a particular venue, it's important to understand the evaporation and transpiration (grass pulling water) levels there that can leave the pitch dry underneath. You need to know how much water evaporates and how much to rewater so it gets into the profile of the pitch, not just the surface. Surface moisture makes the pitch tacky and causes uneven bounce. So, it's crucial to keep the pitch moist to the optimum level when the temperature is on the higher side," said the curator.

So shouldn't teams be allowed to enjoy home advantage considering that's the norm in most leagues across sports in the world. Teams are formed in order to make the most of home conditions, but if the neutral curators queer the pitch, it takes sports' one of the most crucial variants out of equation.