TN coach defends preparing turning tracks at home

When Tamil Nadu went into their customary one-round break during the season, their coach WV Raman found himself in a spot. The team had garnered just nine points from five games. More than thinking about qualifying for the knockouts, avoiding relegation - they were just two points ahead of the bottom-placed team then - was the first task at hand.

With two of the remaining three games to be played at home, the team was in a quandary. Whether to persist with turning tracks at Chepauk - a move that had backfired despite spinners excelling - was the biggest question. That is where Raman put his foot down and asked his batsmen to step up their performance.

"The point is we had to only play on turners. The relaid pitch has not settled down and it's not hard enough. The only option left was to either play on a featherbed or play on a track which can be made to help spinners, and we chose the latter option. And that did help," Raman said.

"More than the Dindigul game I think it is the games against UP and Mumbai [that were the turning points]. Both those teams were good enough to qualify, so it was a question of a shootout. We had to take that calculated risk and luckily we won those games. That's when it started turning around. It gave the boys the belief that they can come through if they apply themselves."

Despite the batting line-up, bolstered by M Vijay's addition to the team, getting its act together, it was the Tamil Nadu spinners who walked away with the honours. In the five home games, of the 84 wickets Tamil Nadu bowlers scalped, 80 were by spinners. In fact, in two of those five games, L Balaji was the lone specialist pacer, whereas in their last three home games, Tamil Nadu went in with no specialist quicks.

As a result, even though their batsmen improved their showing in the last two games - against Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh - Tamil Nadu's entry into the final is also taken with a pinch of salt.

"Lot of people have not given credit to the fact that we have played on turning tracks and that's something that a lot of people have said," the captain Abhinav Mukund said. "It takes some skill to beat two quality teams and get seven points from those games. It says a lot about the quality of our team and I think the turnaround was that I think we played really played against Uttar Pradesh, we got some belief, couple of youngsters came in and turned around.

"We went to Baroda [for the last league game], couple of our fast bowlers did really well for us. We got the belief that we can do really well even on good tracks. Last three games we have played on seaming tracks and I think we have done well so I think the Uttar Pradesh game was the turning point."

In times when curators across the country are asked to make more pace-friendly wickets, Tamil Nadu went against the tide. But for them to end their 27-year itch for a Ranji title, their spinners will have to deliver against the best players of spin in conditions far from being tailor-made for them.

Over to the Wankhede stadium then.