BCCI curators stir controversy ahead of India-West Indies Tests

RAJKOT: If there's a Test match in India, the pitch, or the curator often tend to be in the news for the wrong reasons. No surprise, then, that the build-up to the first Test between India and the West Indies here has been hit by controversy over curators.ALSO READ: CIC brings BCCI under Right to Information ActIn what it terms as its “standard practice,” the BCCI flew in its curators Daljit Singh and Vishwajit Padiyar for the preparation of the wicket for the first Test between India and West Indies. However, this hasn’t gone down well with former Saurashtra Cricket Association (SCA) secretary Niranjan Shah, who still takes a keen interest in the cricket body’s affairs.A former BCCI secretary himself, Shah feels that the move comes across as a case of the board not having faith on the local curators, and termed this as a “wrong practice.”Traditionally, the BCCI summons its own curators as they help the team management in getting the sort of wicket it wants for a particular game or series. In this case, there are murmurs that skipper Virat Kohli and coach Ravi Shastri have demanded fast, bouncy wickets for the two-Test series at home against the West Indies, as it will help the team prepare for the Australia tour in winter, where the wickets are expected to be hard and pace-friendly.A BCCI official, though, was quick to shoot down this speculation. “The curators haven’t been given any sort of instructions so far. At the moment, this wicket has a bit of grass. the wicket here has black soil on it, which ensures that the spinners aren’t able to make the ball turn and jump as menacingly as it does on a wicket with red soil. It should basically be a good cricket pitch,” he said.Shah, though, seems to be in a mood to train his gun at the BCCI, and more specially, at the Committee of Administrators (CoA) running the show in the Board. “Wherever there is an established centre, the local curators have enough experience to make the wicket. So, they should be given a chance, rather than sending people from outside. Naturally, our main curator (Mahendra Rajdev, a former Saurashtra cricketer) will not feel comfortable if curators are being summoned form outside. Can’t we make wickets?” he asks.“In the Ranji Trophy, the BCCI has started the concept of neutral curators, because there was a problem of doctoring of pitches. The BCCI curators can come and check if the wicket is doctored or not, but give the local curators a chance. Every ground’s curator knows exactly what has to be done on that wicket,” he feels.“If you don’t stop doing this, incidents like the one at Pune will happen again,” Shah says, pointing out to the pitch fiasco during the India-Australia series when the ICC rated the wicket ‘poor’ in its report in 2017 after 24 wickets fell in the first two days of the game.