Catch 22-yard situation

Indian cricket, in general, has an unusually strong affinity for pitch-gazing on the eve of a Test, and the attention given to the playing surface by the national team is far greater than any other side in the world, writes Kunal Pradhan in the Indian Express. How will the Kanpur track turn out?

Everyone in the vicinity of the pitch had either an opinion on its nature, or an anecdote about it from the years gone by. There were reminders of how the wicket for this Test hadn’t been used for an international match in decades, and how it was the one on which Malcolm Marshall had made Sunil Gavaskar drop his bat with a bouncer in 1983.