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Indian players celebrate after winning the last Test cricket match between India and West Indies at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi on Tuesday. (Express Photo | Praveen Khanna)
Former India off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has called for the introduction of standard Test centres for home Tests. The 39-year-old said one needed to consider factors such as familiarity for players apart from crowds filling up stadiums, while allotting matches in India.
Ashwin said that playing on best pitches had to be a non-negotiable as far as choosing Test venues in India was concerned, adding that the hosts had to make the most of home conditions by playing on surfaces on which the team is used to playing.
“Test centres is not about crowds alone. It is also about familiarity of conditions. If we are playing a Test in Guwahati or Ranchi, I am not against these venues as a possibility. But the problem in India is every surface has a different identity. There is literally no bounce in the Eastern part of the country. It becomes a very ordinary Test match pitch then.”
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“Make sure whichever Test centre you decide has the best pitches. Some venues are better than others only because the pitches are better and the team is used to conditions. That is home advantage. Otherwise the only point is you are playing within that Indian map as home, but is not home,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel “Ash ki Baat”.
Ashwin concurred with former India captain Virat Kohli’s suggestion from a few years ago, where he had called for the introduction of five permanent centres for Test cricket in India.
“Eden Gardens, Guwahati – playing against South Africa there, should there be standard Test centres? Virat said years ago they must be fixed. I personally think it’s about time, why did we make Test centres? So more cricketers could emerge, and their associations would get more funding. But Guwahati as a Test match is not a home game for either team, and I don’t think anyone in the Indian team has played a first-class game in Guwahati,” the 106-Test veteran said.
Kohli had said in 2019 that India needed to have only five Test centres as he felt opposition teams had to be aware of the kind of pitches and crowds they would expect when they tour the country. He had said India could consider having a wider pool of venues for limited-overs series.
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“We’ve been discussing this for a long time now, and in my opinion we should have five Test centres, period. I mean, I agree [with] state associations and rotation and giving games and all that, that is fine for T20 and one-day cricket, but Test cricket, teams coming to India should know, ‘we’re going to play at these five centres, these are the pitches we’re going to expect, these are the kind of people that will come to watch, crowds’,” Kohli had said.
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