MOHALI: There is a sense of panic at Mohali. With just hours to go for Kings XI Punjab’s final home game against Chennai Super Kings, a sudden spell of rain has left workers scurrying about with sponges and soppers. Daljit Singh stands calmly at the edge of the ground, surveying what is going on. He has known the PCA Stadium before its birth and knows exactly how long it will take to scrub it dry.
If there were a book about Daljit, an apt title would be ‘A brief history of Indian pitches’, for that’s his story! Before the BCCI Ground and Pitches Committee chairman gave up a coaching career — his final job with Karnataka saw him mentor Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath and Sunil Joshi — and took up curatorship, pitches in the country were a pre-historic lot. “It was just watering, rolling, more watering and more rolling,” says Daljit. “I didn’t even dream we’d have any of these one day,” he adds, pointing at the garage-full of rollers and grass-cutters, of different size and purpose, that is part of the arsenal.
The former Northern Punjab, Services, Delhi and Bihar wicketkeeper first became interested in the art of maintaining playing surfaces when he was with Tata Steel in Dhanbad. “It was in 1966-67 and all of Bihar had matting wickets. Tata decided to create the state’s first turf in Dhanbad and that spiked my interest.”
That interest lay dormant for two decades, until former BCCI president IS Bindra invited him to work on the stadium being constructed in the early 90s. His work on the pitch, which quickly gained the reputation of being helpful for fast bowlers after Courtney Walsh left Manoj Prabhakar in a pool of blood in its inaugural Test, led him into the first BCCI pitch committee headed by Kapil Dev in 1997. “That was a landmark moment in India cricket history. I began reading to understand the science of pitches and realised we were doing a lot of wrong. We were following the British method. The Australian one was more suited to us because of similarity in climate.”
Listening to Daljit talk about pitches is an education and a futile exercise, for it would take a research paper to reproduce everything. But one thing he is at pains to illustrate is how far Indian pitches, mostly dustbowls and flat-tracks in the first 40 years of existence, have come in the last 20.
“They used to just fill in the pitch with anything and focus on the soil layer at the top. Now we know each layer serves a purpose, how best to plant a blade of grass, when to shave it off and when to let it be. Understanding the pitch has developed into a science. I remember one of India’s top players, who played in my time, telling me the first time he looked at the pitch was when he came into bat. Now we have U-19 kids standing over and analysing a day before play.”
At 73, Daljit is not done yet. The committee he heads runs a coaching course that’s produced 52 qualified curators manning various grounds across the country. “I believe in passing knowledge down. We’ve a lot of young curators who are extremely good at what they do.”