Worries for Motera curator

AHMEDABAD, March 31: With two days to go for the second India-South Africa Test, the Sardar Patel Gujarat stadium curator Dhiraj Parsana is "keeping his fingers crossed" about the nature of the wicket, which has assumed great significance after the dreary draw on a docile Chennai track in the first Test.
Parsana expects the wicket to be a "sporting" one, which means it will help the pace bowlers (in the early phase of the match), the batsmen (in the game's second stage) and finally the spinners.
If wishes were horses, then this of course would be true. But since they aren't, a more pragmatic view of the ground conditions is called for. More realistically, Parsana takes into consideration the weather conditions here at this time of the year.
"The ground temperature is 42 degrees celsius at the moment, and the heat may dry the moisture that is present in the track. Then the bounce will be low and the pitch may become slow," said Parsana.
Historically, the Motera wicket has helped the batsmen more than the bowlers, though it did turn a bit in the last Test India played here: in 2005 when they beat Sri Lanka.
When asked what the BCCI's pitches committee is doing about the state of the 'dead' Indian tracks, Parsana says: "Pitches on which domestic matches are being played are producing results, as the record will show. Unfortunately Test wickets have not proven to be so lively."
The pitches committee had as its head Kapil Dev, then subsequently, K Srikkanth, Kasturi Rangan, Venkat Sunderam and now Baljit Singh. But apparently the committee does not seem to be doing much in the matter of producing bouncy, result-oriented wickets.
None of the previous eight Test matches at this venue were played in April, or any other summer month.
But, the met department says there's some hope for both the players and the fans in this part of the country where the summers are torrid: a depression has been sighted off the Arabian Sea and this may produce cloudy weather at the time of the match.