Pitching it wrong

Indian cricket appears to have touched a new low in the just-concluded series against Pakistan. On a superficial view it is easy to blame it all on the players.

And since they are the visible and performing cogs in the machine that Indian cricket has become, the view will even have some plausibility.

After all, it was they who batted, bowled and fielded badly. What more is there to be said? Plenty, actually, because for a complete answer the question must be asked: to what extent was the Board responsible? If cricket is a cruel mistress, the Board of Control for Cricket in India is an even crueller master.

What's more, like all opaque monopolies it is a self-serving one as well. And, obviously, those who are being served by it, like sundry politicians, ex-civil servants, sponsors, journalists and others, are doing very well out of it, thank you very much.

At the heart of the problem lies this I-am-all-right-Jack (mind your own business) approach. Nowhere else would a body that receives and spends vast sums of money annually be as free from scrutiny as the Board is.

And the reason for that is its charter, which renders it immune. That charter was drawn up by an Englishman anxious to keep his beloved Board safe from the prying eyes and grasping hands of the natives.

He seems to have succeeded only in half measure because while the eyes do not pry, the hands certainly grasp (or try to do so).

In the immediate context of the Indo-Pak series the Indian team, the hundreds of millions of followers of the game would surely be asking: why do we have such batsman-friendly pitches?

From the very start of the series it became clear that the side that won the toss hugely increased its chances of winning the game.

What then is the point of a contest whose outcome is more or less certain the moment the coin lands? In the first innings the bowlers stand no chance whatsoever and in the second, the batsmen struggle to even reach the ball.

The contest is not fair and, in the long run, this can only reduce the attractions of the game. The Board needs to ensure pitches that offer an equal chance to both sides.

Otherwise, the game will become a sterile bore, which, in some ways, it already has.

It is no excuse, a la W G Grace, to say the crowds come to see runs being scored and not wickets fall. This is complete nonsense, as is clear from the way pitches are prepared in Australia, South Africa and England.

The point about those wickets is not that they are bouncy, which of course they are.

The point is that they don't make the game as one-sided as the South Asian pitches do. The old reason for making such pitches""the desire to beat the MCC in India""has been obsolete for 30 years. It is time the Board woke up to this fact.