There were many who called out on Twitter, or wherever they could, to blame the Nagpur pitch with the Proteas’ loss, rather than say the Indians were worthy winners, and was on top by far on a spin-friendly, bowler-helpful pitch.
But this sentiment was reversed when the hosts’ coach Ravi Shastri said that the Ashes was the other way around, where in Nagpur spin had the work cut out for the batsman, but the Ashes was finished even quicker.
And he has not had enough of the same old story over and over again. No, he wants there to be a pitch that helps his spinners, headed by the reliable Ravichandran Ashwin, and he sees no reason why there can’t be spin on offer from Day one.
Glenn Maxwell was the first to take to Twitter and say just about what he thought of the pitch, calling it “diabolical”, while former team-mate from down under, Matthew Hayden, was disappointed to “see the quality of test cricket reduced to what we are witnessing”.
But Shastri thought of it as quite the opposite.
“Nothing wrong with it,” he told ESPNcricinfo. “I would hope the one in Delhi is absolutely the same. I have no qualms about it.
“It just goes to show that with the amount of one-day cricket being played, the tendency to graft, the tendency to spend long hours at the crease are diminishing.
“(The pitch was) absolutely not (a problem). It’s on both sides…You have to stop cribbing and get on with the job at hand.”
Shastri has “nothing wrong with” with pitches of the Nagpur nature, rumours abound that he knew he would not have a lot more than no chance of staying on the job, and therefore he said to the men at Nagpur to under-prepare the pitch as much as they can without the ICC being suspicious.
“Nothing wrong with that (matches finishing inside three days). It (Nagpur) was a test match that was moving all the time. You compare this test to the test match in Perth; I would pay money for a ticket for this game… To hell with the five days.”
He also told all the on-Twitter criticising to butt off, mainly directed at Maxwell and Hayden, two who he knows well enough through playing against them, especially Hayden, challenging them to go to India and face them.
“Let them sit in Australia and talk about their pitches. Tell them not to waste their time about Indian tracks. Come and play here,” said Shastri.
“Which rule tells me that a ball can’t turn on day one? Where does it tell me in the rulebook it can only swing and seam?” he added.