CHENNAI: When the Indian Premier League returned to the home-and-away format this season, one of the key aspects to look forward to was how the franchises would use pitches to their advantage. The MA Chidambaram Stadium, for example, is often expected to throw up turners to assist the strength of Chennai Super Kings, while the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru or the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai are batting-friendly surfaces.
For teams like Lucknow Super Giants, it was going to be more interesting as they would be playing at home (Ekana Stadium) for the first time. While the first game turned out to be run-fest, the second was an extreme opposite. The surface for the clash against Sunrisers Hyderabad was a slow and low turner. The ball seldom bounced over the stumps, there was no pace for the batters to play their shots and often they were waiting for the ball. That 13 off the 20 overs were from spinners with seven wickets between them told the story.
Krunal Pandya, Ravi Bishnoi and Amit Mishra made the most of the surface, and bowled lines and lengths where the batters had to go out of their way to make contact with the ball. It all started with Mayank Agarwal reaching for a delivery from Pandya. It stopped after pitching, and Agarwal ended up hitting it straight to the cover fielder. From thereon, every batter who came in and went back were deceived by the pace or the lack of it, and turn. Pandya took three wickets while Mishra and Bisnoi shared two as Hyderabad managed to make just 121/8 in the 20 overs.
The pitch was behaving in such a way that it was almost similar to the Chepauk surface for the opening game of the 2019 season between CSK and RCB where the visiting team was bundled out for 70. However, it wasn’t the first time the Ekana pitch has behaved in such a manner. In January, India and New Zealand played in a low-scoring T20I that saw a similar pitch on which 30 off the 40 overs where bowled by the spinners. While the skipper for that series Hardik Pandya expressed his displeasure about the pitch, LSG captain KL Rahul is likely to have no complaints whatsoever.
Brief scores: SRH 121/8 in 20 ovs (Krunal 3/18) lost to LSG 127/5 in 16 ovs (Rahul 35, Krunal 34).