By GS Vivek
Venkat Sundaram, the former head of BCCI curator committee, recalls a secret meeting in posh five-star hotel convened by a former board president just before an all-important series. “He put in a simple request, told us, ‘I don’t care about the results of the game or what the ICC says, I will only looking at the pitch, and I want that the team should get what they want. Later, after the series, he texted us…well done.”
This story by Sundaram gains significance because Daljeet Singh, as current chairman of pitch committee is finding himself in hot soup over the Pune pitch, which has been rated as poor by the ICC. The Test match ended in just three days, with R Ashwin opening a new manual in Indian cricket by opening the bowling at one end in the first session of the Test. Sundaram has no sympathies for Daljeet, who he believes is experienced enough to know the consequences as well. “It is purely Daljeet Singh’s fault. A curator always treads on a fine line between catering to what the good game needs and what the home team demands. If you completely play in on team management’s, then you have to cope up all the flak for it alone,” he says. “It can’t happen again and again,” he adds cheekily.
“To prepare this kind of a pitch, you don’t require a curator, you just need a maali. Any pitch you make in India will spin, but this Pune Test looked like it started on a fourth-day pitch. A curator should know how to prepare a pitch, without it being so one-sided. Agreed when India tours overseas, our team gets seaming tracks but it’s not so blatant,” adds Sundaram.
Daljeet Singh, who at 79, survived the Lodha Committee reforms is likely to fall prey to the Committee of Administrators this week with his job on the line after a second adverse report in the last 14 months after the Nagpur pitch against South Africa was censured. Incidentally Daljeet also supervised the Delhi ODI that was abandoned because of unfit pitch.
Sundaram, meanwhile, has been there and witnessed this all, helping Ferozeshah Kotla come back from the taint and host the World Cup games in 2011 and recently helping prepare Greater noida stadium get ICC rating, as base for the Afghan team. “There is always pressure from the team management but a good curator should know how to give what the team wants and also save his skin.
After all, curators have to show their professional expertise as well. For example, the length for a fast bowler is three quarter, for a spinner it’s further up. So you can keep the spinners length dry a bit to help spinners. These are simple tips, you don’t need to tap off completely,” he says.
Sundaram is game to step in and help the BCCI with the pitches but says there are many talented curators in the system as well. “I would definitely help the BCCI, I am not yet 70 but more than this I believe that many good people like Taposh is there, and there are many others who can do a good job if handed over the role,” he says.
The former Delhi skipper and left-hand batsman, who has also donned the hat of a selector describes a curator aptly. “He is a man who has several high-profile friends all around him but in a crisis he is all alone,” he says.
Daljeet will agree.