BENGALURU: Over the last year and a bit, the surfaces at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium have undergone a silent revolution. Even though it's de rigueur to call the strips great for batting, it hasn't necessarily passed the smell or the eye test.
Mo Bobat and Dinesh Karthik, two senior figures within Royal Challengers Bengaluru, have spoken about this issue over the last 12 months. After the first few matches last year, Karthik suggested that the franchise would talk to the curators to find out why pitches were 'challenging' to bat on. "We will have a chat with him (curators)," he had said. "We trust him to do his job. So, this isn't a pitch that's helping the batters too much. It's a challenging pitch. So that has been the case so far in both the games we have played."
The low, slow nature of the surfaces meant their batters could only make 169/8 and 163/7 in the games in question. They lost both those games but it didn't matter.
That trend seems to have continued this season too. There have been some tall scores but the surfaces have been uncharacteristically tacky with the ball stopping on the bat a few times, especially with the new ball.
This kind of surface directly contradicts the kind of batting — "aggressive," in the words of Mo Bobat — the franchise wants to showcase. Ahead of the game against Gujarat Titans on Friday, the director of cricket maintained that there is generally no scope for home advantage because the lead curator is one appointed by the BCCI. "It (the pitches here) has certainly been indifferent the last few years.
"I don't know how other franchises see it (home advantage). We have got a BCCI curator here (for the pitch preparations). We don't really have a lot of influence. It's a home venue in terms of city and Stadium... it's looked different in the last two-and-a-half years that I have been here. We have a decent grasp with it but it doesn't change how we want to play our cricket. We will continue to assess and adapt according to the conditions."
While a couple of the strips in the square have stayed true, it's certainly true that a few of the decks at the venue have become sluggish. Slow and low. For example, in the last game against Lucknow Super Giants, it had become very difficult to bat on it.
Of course, preparing a pitch is trial and error and the city is facing one of its harshest summers in recent memory. With neutral curators, they may take some time to get used to the conditions. And, in this context, they may not know how much to water the surface.
From an RCB perspective, though, Friday's game gives them an opportunity to close out the Bengaluru leg of their home campaign with a win and join the front-runners (their remaining two 'home' games will be played at Raipur next month).