Leothebear wrote:didds wrote:Leothebear wrote:Big defeat on its way. The track is a spinners' dream and India have the better, more consistent spinners.
Let's hope the next venue is a reasonable batting track.
India need 2-1 or 3-1 series victory to make the final at lords thing.
It won't be a decent batting track. they'll risk losing the toss and the test against a draw becasue its a nice track.
What does this actually mean?
Within reason, the groundsman can prepare the wicket in various ways. They can make it more of a batting pitch so scoring will be easier, the match will last longer but with that the potential for a draw becomes more likely. Or they can prepare it to be more bowler friendly and hence more likely not to go the 5 days and therefore one team or the other will win.
In this case didds is speculating that India will want a result in order to make the Lords final. I am not sure that makes sense as India only have to win the series 2-1 so a draw and a win in the last test will suffice. It's not sh*t or bust in this test.
Note that preparing a pitch is not an exact science.
Also there is an assumption that England will not want a results pitch but I'm not sure that is true either because they have to win 3-1 to make Lords so this is sh*t or bust in that regard.
Given it's a day/night test and the situation of the series/qualifying for Lords I wouldn't expect the groundsman to be told to go much one way or another. If India won it you would expect them to make the wicket in the last test like a road to favour a drawn game.