India off-spinner R Ashwin launched a scathing attack on critics of the Motera pitch where the third Test against England was played. The pitch was heavily criticised by many for offering a lot of turn and the match finished in less than two days. “I have a question back. What is a good cricket surface? The bowlers want to win the game. The batsman needs to bat well to get runs. No question about it. What makes a good surface? Who defines this? Seam on the first day and then bat well and then spin on the last two days,” Ashwin said during a virtual media interaction.
“Come on! Who makes all these rules, we need to get over it and not talk about whatever picture you want to paint. If you’re asking if it is a good Test surface, I don’t see any of the players coming from England having an issue with the surface.
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“They want to improve, they look like they want to have a contest. Is it the players and the people who are reporting back that want their players to not complete and complain about the pitches? Because we have never done that on any of the tours.”
Ashwin further added that people were being conditioned to think a certain way about pitches and that it didn’t sit too well with him.
“Thoughts being put across and planted to people is really hilarious and I find it heinous to a point, where you have a thought process and you want everyone to follow that and think that and condition it.”
“With thoughts what happens is, you condition people into believing in a certain way, so you watch a match, you watch India win the game and at most, everyone’s saying ‘I’m happy India won.’
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“You don’t want people to go back home and say, ‘India is not winning the game, it’s the pitch that’s winning game’. That’s not what I want people to do.
“Anyway, I know that’s going to come up, this kind of conditioning has been happening, it has happened for a long time. It’s important people sell things, but we must know what we must buy.”
Ashwin also said that no one from the England team has complained about the surface and that the Indian team have never had issues with whatever surfaces they have been presented when touring overseas.
“I have said this in the past also that everybody is entitled to their opinion and I am not here to say your opinion was wrong or right. But the fact remains that the talk around the surface…it’s just getting out of hand.
“Why would you talk about the surface to us time and time again? Has there been any instance where the surface has been spoken about at any other place, any other country we have played games in?
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“I somehow find it very, very funny that when they speak about the surface, it immediately gets quoted all over in our press. And that is the issue here.
“Because there have been instances. We went to New Zealand and both Tests were over within five days. A total of five days for two Test matches and nobody quoted it.
“There is a video that’s doing the rounds where Virat in South Africa is saying that ‘I’m not here to talk about the pitch and I am not comforting my team’.
“That is how we have been taught to play cricket and I don’t know why we indulge in such thoughts, promote such thoughts. That’s why I say, let them sell it, buying is always our choice.”
The final Test will be held from March 4 onwards at the same venue.
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