The drop-in pitch at the Nassau County Cricket Stadium in New York continues to invite criticism with concerns being raised over the safety of players now considering the uneven bounce on it. A couple of India stars including captain Rohit Sharma and Rishabh Pant ended up copping blows to their bodies during their team’s opening clash of the tournament against Ireland on Wednesday morning.
Rohit ended up retiring hurt after hitting a half-century, an innings during his which was hit on his arm after a ball bounced awkwardly as he attempted a pull shot off the bowling of fast bowler Josh Little.
Later, Pant was hit on the elbow off a delivery that didn’t bounce as expected leaving him in some pain requiring physio’s attention.
Also Read: Rohit Fine But ‘Huge Open Cracks’ on Drop-in Pitch Leaves ICC Red-faced
India batting coach Vikram Rathour stopped short of criticising the surface but did concede that it’s ‘challenging’ and that the team will have to look for ways to deal with it.
“(We are) trying to control the controllable. It was a challenging wicket and we were expecting a challenging wicket because we played a practice game here so we knew what to expect,” Rathour said after India completed an eight-wicket win to start their campaign.
“We need to find a way to deal with it and we have enough skills in the team and enough experience in the team to deal with it. We should be fine,” he added.
Rathour said toss becomes vital in such conditions.
“The toss is crucial in conditions like these but fortunately, we won the toss so it was a great start, but you again can’t control that. Even if we lose the toss and we have to bat first, we still need to find ways to deal with the situation and the pitch,” he said.
“As many (runs) as we can get. I’m not going to put any number to that. We need to bat well and maximise whatever we can get. Whatever you can get,” he added.
Rathour said India’s batters are capable of asserting themselves on any kind of surface and added adaptability will be the key.
“We have enough good batters who can manage to bat well on any kind of surface — that has been our strength for many, many years,” he said. “We can adapt really well to different conditions and on this surface you really need to adapt well and take it head-on and not worry about it too much.”
The drop-in pitch was prepared in Adelaide before being flown to USA for the marquee event.
The track being used here was flown in from Adelaide. The first match at this venue was also a low-scoring affair with Sri Lanka being bowled out for 77 in 19.1 overs before South Africa took 16.2 overs to overhaul the target.
When asked if such pitches are the right kind to promote cricket in USA, Rathour said, “”I am sure it has been challenging for the curators or for ICC to create something here in the past 6-7 months or whatever time they have taken. It was never going to be easy.”
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