No neutral ground on neutral venues

Two major decisions could be made at the inaugural BCCI conclave in Dharamsala on Friday - the identity of the new India head coach and a decision on whether all matches in the Ranji Trophy should be played at neutral venues.

The board's technical committee, headed by former India captain Sourav Ganguly, had recommended the move as a remedy for the long-standing problem of home teams playing on tailor-made pitches and "to expose players to play in different conditions."

But it doesn't seem to be an open-and-shut case. If anything, the players, coaches, groundsmen and administrators feel the longstanding system of playing matches home and away shouldn't be altered.

"The interest within home teams and getting crowds to come and watch the game is going to diminish, obviously," Karnataka batsman Robin Uthappa said. "It's not like the numbers are very big to start off with anyway, but the interest was growing in domestic cricket. I think this will kind of pull it back a little bit because how many guys are going to watch a Karnataka-Tamil Nadu game in Mumbai?"

Amol Muzumdar, the second-highest run-getter in the Ranji Trophy and a former Mumbai captain, agreed. "You need to pull in the crowds. You need a [Cheteshwar] Pujara playing in Saurashtra to come and watch him and have youngsters dream of playing for India one day. Youngsters would want to come and watch Rohit Sharma in Mumbai. They won't come to watch in Guwahati. And for what? For those guys who are greedy for the spots [in the points table], who make bad wickets so that it suits the home team? For those guys, you are denying fans coming to the grounds?"

Tamil Nadu Cricket Association secretary KS Viswanathan wondered if there were enough neutral venues to host first-class matches in India. "You need to define what is neutral," he said. "You cannot play in nine centres [of the teams in the same group]. If I have Mumbai and Delhi in my group, for instance, I can't play there. Have you got those kinds of [alternate] venues with [quality] facilities? All these things they [the board] are trying are experimental. We will put forth our views, but it is up to them."

Viswanathan was also unconvinced that this change would guarantee better pitches. "How do you ensure all these neutral venues will have sporting wickets? Wickets are actually controlled by [state] associations, not by BCCI," he said. "Basically, BCCI curators can't come and prepare wickets. Consistently preparing wickets is not that easy."

The push for neutral venues has been backed by the BCCI president as well. It is understood that Anurag Thakur had been peeved after Himachal Pradesh, his home state, took a beating on turning pitches last season.

Last November, Odisha lodged a complaint against an "underprepared pitch" at the Bengal Cricket Academy Ground in Kalyani. The home team Bengal had knocked Odisha out for 37, their second-lowest total in Ranji history.

Former champions Tamil Nadu often make pitches to suit their spinners. Last year's finalists Saurashtra have been accused of producing slow turners over the years. In 2015, Ravindra Jadeja took a record 37 wickets in three matches at the start of the league phase to return to India's Test team. A BCCI official said, "first three games were rank turners, Jadeja took 30-odd wickets. They won all the matches in two or three days and [it] helped them qualify into the knockouts."

Shitanshu Kotak, the former Saurashtra captain and their current coach, said it wasn't right to call every pitch that assists spin 'underprepared'. "Playing on spinning tracks is not doctoring," he said. "In Rajkot, I have seen teams scoring about 150 runs in the first session. If batsmen are playing aggressive cricket and getting out and the match gets over in two-and-a-half days, then I am not sure you can blame the wicket." Kotak felt a pitch should be marked down only if the ball misbehaves so badly that a batsman's health was threatened.

Last year, Saurashtra played two of their home matches at the Madhavrao Scindia Cricket ground in Rajkot, which produced the lowest average for spinners across the country - 14.05. But Kotak pointed out that in one of those matches, against Jharkhand, 373 runs were scored on the first day for the loss of 20 wickets. "So it is not that you can't score runs. You can on these pitches. It is about playing time and not going in with an aggressive attitude all the time." At the Saurashtra Cricket Association ground, where Kotak's team played their remaining three home matches, the spinners averaged 25.41.

Kotak also pointed out that Saurashtra secured four outright wins - three of them inside three days and two in the knockout stage - in their five away matches last season, played on green pitches. That, he said, showed the team was equipped to handle all kinds of conditions.

With the inclusion of a new team, Chattisgarh, each round would comprise about 10 matches. But currently, the BCCI's pitch and grounds committee has ten curators. Insiders reckon it would be impossible for one of them to be at at every venue; just as it would be impossible to increase the pool of qualified curators overnight.

Having experienced and qualified curators has been a long-standing problem. Even a venue like Eden Gardens is currently in the care of by administrator, Sujan Mukherjee, who had to step in when the head groundsman, the late Prabir Mukherjee, had quit.

As many as 17 out of 108 league matches in the last Ranji Trophy ended within two or three days. The need for change is apparent. But one BCCI official insisted that instead of pushing for matches at neutral venues, punitive action should be taken against the state associations that produce sub-standard pitches. "A match finished in two days on a rank turner and the match referee does not write a comment. He just signs and sends it to the BCCI. What good is that?"

Muzumdar wanted "honest" reporting from match officials. "If there is honesty in the reporting, things can improve," he said. "You need home-and-away concept. If you are concerned, add an additional day. And make sure the pitch has to survive for five days. If the curator does not make a pitch that will last for five days, and if the match gets over in two or three days, then obviously something is wrong. It should not be an unplayable pitch."

Muzumdar also said that with a lot of matches being recorded by the BCCI video analysts, there could be merit in forming a separate committee to look through the footage and decide on the fitness of pitches around the country.

Another method that could be trialled, according to Muzumdar, is doing away with the toss to give the away team the choice of batting or bowling first. The move was trialled in English county cricket this season to prevent teams from preparing heavily seamer-friendly pitches.

The debate on neutral venues is nothing new. The pitch and grounds committee had suggested the knockouts should be played on neutral venues. The 2008-09 Ranji semi-final between Mumbai and Saurashtra was played in Chennai. Sachin Tendulkar, who was part of that match, commented that neutral venues rob teams of crowd support, which could be vital in a must-win match. TNCA secretary Viswanathan recalled that, "there was not a single guy watching the match, so that is one of the reasons why they said that we should not be hosting [even] knockout matches elsewhere."

The following season, the knockouts were played per a rotation policy, but since 2014, the BCCI has gone back to staging play-offs at neutral venues.

Another issue with playing solely in neutral venues is inflated budgets. "[Increased cost] is also one of the reasons," Viswanathan said. "As of now, of eight matches we play, four [happen] in our home grounds and four outside. Now, all the matches are outside, which means we will have to travel and we will now incur additional cost on travel as well as on the lodging.

"There is only a media rights grant which we'll have to utilise. Every year, we might get about [INR] 20-25 crore, including IPL money, but our expenditure is itself going to be 18 to 20 crore now. It costs about INR 4-5 lakh [to host] a match at home. We have a squad of 35 people and everybody gets a single room and we travel by air. One tour will cost about 15 lakh."

Uncertainty seems to be the dominant theme in this debate but there are positive signs too. "It (neutral venues) gives cricketers an opportunity to play in different conditions which are not home conditions," Uthappa said. "In that sense, there is an opportunity to grow for cricketers."