In a major development, details of the pitch to be offered in the first Test between the Indian National Cricket Team and the Bangladesh National Cricket Team have been revealed.
India will host Bangladesh for the first time in a Test series since the historic pink-ball Test in November 2019. The first Test will be played from September 19 in Chennai, and the second Test will be played from September 27 in Kanpur.
Bangladesh will go into the series high on confidence after their recent dominance on the tour of Pakistan. So far, the Bangladesh Tigers have not won a single Test match against India in the 13 encounters and they will be looking to change that this time around.
Meanwhile, according to a report in the Indian Express, the team management has decided to play the first Test in Chennai on a red dirt pitch.
This decision was made because the Bengal Tigers are used to playing on black clay pitches at home. It is worth noting that red clay courts are faster, offer more bounce and favour players who set the pace and hit balls, especially as the match progresses and the pitch deteriorates.
On the other hand, black clay courts retain moisture and are slower and have less bounce, and the team led by Najmul Hossain Shanto has been playing on such courts at home.
Taking full advantage of home court advantage, plans have been made to implement a pitch that will predominantly have red dirt content.
The ground staff at the Chennai stadium reportedly covered the pitch with a good layer of grass at 11:30 am to prevent it from breaking. Notably, this would not be the first time that India will use this tactic as in the 2019 series too; they produced favourable pace tracks for the Bangladesh series, and the home team’s bowlers managed to get just 5 wickets.
Morne Morkel joins Team India’s practice session ahead of Test series
The team’s newly appointed bowling coach Morne Morkel also joined the team in Chennai ahead of the Test series. According to the same report, he was seen spending more time with the fast bowlers.
In particular, the next two test matches will be Morne Morkel’s first assignment with the Men In Blue and he will soon have a one-on-one introductory session with all the players.
As for the practice session of Rohit Sharma & Co., it started at 9:30 am and went on till 3 pm with all the players involved. Though the red-ground pitch will be used, Indian batsmen like Rohit Sharma, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli and Shubman Gill practiced on the black-ground pitch against the bowlers, reported Indian Express.
As the Men in Blue will be up against a lot of left-arm spinners against Bangladesh and New Zealand, they decided to prepare accordingly and apart from Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel, they called up S Ajith Ram, M Siddharth and P Vignesh to the nets. Among the off-spinners, Ravichandran Ashwin was joined by Lakshay Jain and Himanshu Singh.
Additionally, among the pacers, the BCCI had called up Arpit Guleria, Gurnoon Brar, Yudhvir Singh, Vaibhav Arora, Simarjeet Singh and Gurjapneet Singh to help the batsmen prepare in the nets.
Meanwhile, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has already revealed the squad for the first Test with Rishabh Pant making his comeback and Yash Dayal getting his first call-up for the Test.