ICC's assessment of Nagpur pitch 'subjective' - Manohar

Shashank Manohar, the BCCI president, has said he did not entirely agree with ICC match referee Jeff Crowe's assessment of calling the Nagpur pitch as poor. Manohar said that while he would "abide" by the ICC's verdict, he called Crowe's decision "subjective".

The Nagpur Test, the third of the four-Test series between India and South Africa, finished inside three days, with batsmen from both sides failing to counter the excessive spin which the pitch took from the first hour of the first morning. The ICC subsequently issued an official warning to the pitch without imposing any penalty.

However, despite the notice, BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur and India's team director Ravi Shastri disagreed with the assessment. Shastri even pointed out the example of the Adelaide Test between Australia and New Zealand, which also ended in three days, and asked why there had been no furore on that occasion.

When asked if the ICC was exercising double standards in the way it assesses turning pitches and pitches with bounce, Manohar was cautious in his response.

"The ICC has framed rules with regards to excellent wicket, good wicket, poor wicket and dangerous wicket," he said. "Now with regards to poor wickets, they have said where there is excessive spin or where there is excessive seam movement, the wicket is considered to be poor.

"In case of Nagpur, what the match referee held was that there was excessive spin on the third day and there was uneven bounce. Now according to me it is a subjective decision taken by the match referee.

"The decisions may vary based on whether it is uneven bounce, or whether the wicket is spinning more than what is supposed to be. It is again a subjective thing because one spinner may spin the ball less (and) the other spinner may spin the ball more. So all these factors have to be taken into consideration. But finally the ICC is the supreme body and we would abide by that decision."