The Surfer

'New approach needed towards preparing pitches in India'

There is plenty of work to be done by the BCCI's Pitches and Grounds Committee, writes Makarand Waingankar in the Hindu

Siddhartha Talya
Siddhartha Talya
25-Feb-2013
There is plenty of work to be done by the BCCI's Pitches and Grounds Committee, writes Makarand Waingankar in the Hindu. Mechanisms need to be put in place and there is also a need for skilled manpower, he says.
After interaction with many State curators over the years, it is observed that from choosing soil to pitch preparation everything is carried out using a thumb rule. There is no mechanism in place to select good quality soil. What the soil contains must be known to the curators but with hardly any choice to know what it contains, the soil is selected in huge quantity by thumb rule.
A couple of years ago, each association was handed over pitch and ground preparation machines worth lakhs of rupees but many associations had no skilled manpower to use those machines.

Siddhartha Talya is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo