India unfussed by failure on fast pitch

The short duration of Twenty20 cricket makes it so high-strung that a little deviation from ideal batting conditions breaks the match. You know the pitch is doing something, you know you have to bat with caution, but you also know every dot ball is making it easier for the opposition. The time that you have to judge a par total on a pitch is little, but then again you can't be sure the pitch won't improve for batting with time. So it was that in the unlikeliest of places, at a ground that can justifiably claim to have the flattest pitch in India, former Maharashtra tearaway Pandurang Salgaoncar, the head groundsman in Pune, laid out a rare fast and bouncy pitch that tested the fabric of T20 cricket. The general consensus from the teams after a low-scoring, one-sided game is: these are rare conditions that won't be repeated anytime soon, so let's not complicate our games too much.

The new ball seamed, and even when the ball became older it flew through to the keeper. The sponginess of the bounce suggested excess moisture in the pitch, by Twenty20 standards. A perfect storm was created when two early mis-hits went to hand. A maiden was bowled. Geniuses such as Michael Hussey assess pitches perfectly at such times, but even they have to run the risk of looking silly if they go for 140 and the opposition has two good early overs and stroll through the chase.

India tried to be bullish at the start, but with every ball that went they felt the need to play the big shot. India's captain MS Dhoni said they knew the pitch was different and that they needed to play differently, but he also said it is not as if you can consolidate for five to seven overs in T20 cricket. "We keep sending these messages [with reassessed par scores]," he said. "But the format is so short… if you see the 50-over format and you lose early wickets you say let's have a partnership. That partnership is five overs, seven overs. In this format it is five balls, seven balls, eight balls."

The perfect T20 batsman somehow manages to score a run a ball without taking undue risks on these pitches, and then plays the odd big hit. India might have erred on the side of a few big shots too many, but their opponents weren't left surprised either. "It's T20, so obviously one batsman has to take a calculated risk," Sachithra Senanayake said. "But our bowlers did a great job, especially the fast bowlers. It's so hard to play big shots on that wicket, so our bowlers did a great job."

Dhoni conceded they did need a partnership, but wasn't too harsh on his batsmen. "If you talk about this wicket, definitely one partnership was important," he said. "Whenever we had a bit of a partnership, when we went to play a big shot… luck is also a bit of a factor. When we played the big shots, one or two catches got dropped, but when you play the big shot [and mis-hit it] even if you don't get out you realise this is a different wicket and you need to bat differently. Also we are coming from a series where we have scored a lot of runs, and also we have scored so many runs in Australia so at times it feels like, 'Whatever it is, it is India's wicket after all [we can bat on this].'"

This kind of a T20 match happens every once in a while, but a majority of them are played on flatter surfaces that bow to the batsmen's demands. Nothing from any practice session on the eve of the match suggested the teams were even expecting the batsmen to be tested by the pitch. As it happened, a man with two wickets in 26 matches before this wrecked India. He even admitted he is a batting allrounder. The general attitude in the Indian camp is to ask the fans to not look for the kind of nuance you would in 50-overs cricket. The batsmen will just keep calm and play the next big shot.