CHENNAI: "What was a little disappointing for me here, considering it's a home game, and in the IPL you've seen how teams have looked at taking a little bit of home advantage. From that point of view, you've seen the curator is not really thinking that it's a home game. I think maybe it looked like, you know, it was Punjab curator out here."
That was Lucknow Super Giants team mentor Zaheer Khan expressing his frustration at the way the surface for the clash against Punjab Kings behaved at the Ekana Stadium on Tuesday. "But I hope that this is the first and the last game when it comes to that, because you are disappointing the Lucknow fans as well."
It's been a hot-button issue over the league's first ten days this season.
First, it came from Kolkata Knight Riders captain Ajinkya Rahane after the loss against Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the season opener. There was a war of words with the curator saying he wouldn't prepare pitches to benefit the franchise.
Last week, Chennai Super Kings head coach did not mince words about the conditions at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. “Well, as we've been telling you for several years, there is no home advantage at Chepauk,” he said after losing to RCB. “We've been really honest with you, we haven't been able to read the wickets here for the last couple of years. We are trying to come to grips each day with what we get. We've just got to get better at it, but it's very difficult when they all look the same. It's not the Chepauk where you can just go and play four spinners. We're having to work really hard to try and understand what the nature of each pitch is."
Meanwhile, Parthiv Patel, assistant coach with Gujarat Titans, in a chat with the broadcaster, said they requested a black soil surface for the game against Mumbai Indians. "(This is) on a slower side, something which we wanted. Mumbai have been preparing themselves by playing on a red surface. It was a deliberate effort from our side. We wanted to play on black soil. It's stopping a bit, and it's slightly stickier to start with. From the first impression, there are a lot of cracks on the pitch," Patel said.
How does home advantage work in a league like the IPL? Is it as simple as a head coach calling up the host association and requesting spinning tracks? Or can a captain ask for batting belters from the respective state association? Firstly, the IPL playing conditions says that the pitches are managed by the ground authority of the host association for the league games. For play-offs, it is the responsibility of the BCCI. None of the stadiums or the pitches are owned and managed by the franchises. It's not as simple as Royal Challengers Bengaluru opting to build a new stadium and moving base. They all will have to work with what they have. It's why there's no one-size-fits-all answer to the above-mentioned question.
Historically, some teams have dominated at home during the league stages. CSK is a case in point. Before the pandemic, they used to get to the play-offs on the back of strong home performances. It has played a significant role in how they constructed their squad. Post-pandemic, they are still doing well at home but the nature of pitches in Chennai has changed. That has largely been down to how they have managed to make the most of it with the squads they have constructed.
Home conditions is something all IPL teams keep in mind while building their squad in the auction, but for some, who play at multiple venues, it gets tricky. Dan Weston, an analyst who worked with the Punjab team in the 2022 mega-auctions, explains. "Any team who wants to recruit a strong squad needs to have the home conditions in mind. We have seen in the past, despite recent comments, that CSK have got a great record at Chepauk. They generally recruit players who fit into the conditions at their home venue. And certainly, a team who would have a decent think tank would take those questions and the dynamics into account," Weston told this daily.
"Multiple home venues for several teams like Delhi (Capitals) and Punjab make things tricky in terms of constructing a squad which cover the dynamics of multiple home venues which aren't always the same as well. There's a lot to consider. It's very, very complicated," he added.
The numbers reflect it. Punjab have won two out of 14 home games across three venues since 2023. SRH lost six of the seven games in 2023, RR lost five that year. So did DC and KKR. SRH and KKR turned it around in 2024, but the rest? Not so much. Now, these results are never completely about conditions. Sometimes squad construction, injuries and a lot of other factors come into play as well. On occasions, some teams have just been poor on the field.
But Weston feels that taking issue with the curator in public might not work well for the teams. "I think actually blaming the curator in public is a mistake. Because the curator is someone you need to try and work with to get them on side with you rather than having the animosity in the relationship. In my experience of dealing with the ones in England at least, they tend to be people who are very proud of their work and who are people who don't take criticism well because they feel like they've done a good job. They often feel like they're probably conveniently blamed as an excuse. So I think it's a very tricky balancing act," Weston said.
As things stand, RCB played their first home game on Wednesday, and PBKS are yet to play in Mullanpur or Dharamsala. Only time will tell how they and the rest of the teams fair at their respective home grounds going forward.
For now, however, one thing is clear. The feeling of home advantage might not be as black and white as it is made out to be.
