Captains and coaches see red at the sight of a green wicket in an Indian Test series. Eventhough it is not the case yet, the Eden Garden wicket looks anything but the home bowlers' paradise in the hour-long glimpse that it gave on first day of the Kolkata Test series. Sourav Ganguly's Cricket Association of Bengal is hosting the second Test match after the square was relaid in 2016. The Test match against New Zealand, which India won, was the first. The overcast conditions have only added to the batsmen's woes.
Team India's assistant coach Sanjay Bangar expressed no rancour with the state association over the wicket. “We are happy to play on a wicket like this. This team does not wish to play in easy conditions. In the last test match here against New Zealand, we applied ourselves.”
Sri Lanka's fast bowling coach and former Lanka pacer Rumesh Ratnayake, when asked whether these wickets were needed in times when Test cricket's survival was being talked about, said, "I would love to say yes as a fast bowling coach but if you are looking at getting through five days, I don’t know whether that’s the best option. When you have a grassy pitch, I believe it’s a 50-50 chance for both teams, and if that’s the option one wants to take, as a bowler, as a fast bowler, as a fast bowling coach, I would like to play on wickets like this. But it might be a nightmare for the batsmen.”
When asked whether Suranga Lakmal's 6-6-0-3 spell was the best he had ever witnessed, Ratnayake, said “I would say it is one of the finest I have seen in a long time. I am not sure if it’s the best spell I have seen, but it is certainly one of the finest I have seen for a long, long time. Looking at the wicket, we were sort of expecting that it was going to seam.”
Bangar, meanwhile, was not too worried about the team combination. "We have all bases covered. As the game goes into fourth day, some dents on wickets will lead to variable bounce.”
