There will be no third day, or fourth, or fifth. And you can blame it on me that the Test match between two powerhouses — one who invented the game and the other who marketed it the best — has been wrapped up in just over five sessions of play spread over two days.

I, who stand at the centre of the gladiatorial Motera arena, the Narendra Modi Stadium to be politically correct, am also right at the centre of all discussions and debates, most of it criticism that quashes my credentials with a heavy roller. But it’s okay, blame me, for it’s easier to question the pitch. Whatever is your verdict, I am destined to accept because unlike the players, I don’t have the DRS to bail me out.

But now that it’s all over, it’s a good time for me to introspect — where did I go wrong that batsmen from India and England played on me in a manner they wouldn’t have even on the moon’s craters? It’s not that I hid myself from the two teams. At the toss, Virat Kohli opined that my surface could have something for the seamers. Joe Root, on the other hand, observed that it was dry and would turn and yet he went ahead and packed his team with three frontline pacers and just one spinner.

So one captain read it wrong and the other, perhaps, read it right but picked the wrong team. Who is to be blamed? Of course, me, the pitch, who else!

Once the game started, the batsmen, especially the English ones, appeared as helpless and skittish as newborns on their first walk. I felt for them but could not understand the reason behind their jittery batsmanship.

It was only after the match, or whatever little of it was possible, that I found my answers in Kohli’s words at the post-match presentation. “To be honest, I don’t think the quality of batting was at all up to the standards from both teams... lack of application from both sides,” the India skipper said.

That was such a relief to hear. Not because I don’t want to be blamed, you can still blame me full throttle, but because I had self-doubts when Michael Vaughan tweeted: “Entertaining .. YES .. but this is a awful pitch for Test cricket .. !!!! Complete lottery on day 2.” When a distinguished former England captain calls you “awful”, you are awful, until and unless a bigger captain and a better batsman comes forward to present the other side of the picture.

I must also thank Root for holding up a mirror to his team. “We won the toss and batted first, but we didn’t capitalise on that. We could’ve got 250,” he said after the match.

Most of the dismissals, by Kohli’s count “21 out of the 30 wickets that fell”, were results of the straighter ball, not the viciously turning one. It began with Jonny Bairstow playing for the turn and missing an angled in, straight ball from Axar Patel to be out LBW in the first innings and ended with Jofra Archer going for a sweep off a Ravichandran Ashwin fuller, straighter delivery, missing it and being caught plumb in front in England’s second innings. In between, time and time again the batsmen, of name and fame, kept playing for the turning ball and kept making a fool of themselves, undone by the straighter ones.

Lesser said about poor shot selection, like Bairstow attempting a sweep of the very first ball — innings’ second — he faced, it’s better. One shouldn’t criticise players of repute for their failure in an outdated format of cricket. They are not pitches, after all.

Mr Vaughan thinks I’m not a “5-day pitch”. But do we have five-day cricketers, ones who played Test cricket with the patience of a novelist? The game has changed, for good or bad, and while it’s always played on a pitch, the pitch doesn’t get to make its own surface. We, and I also speak for my overseas cousins who are mostly of a seaming nature, are at the mercy of the politics of the game. Home advantage?

I am a turner, but was I unplayable? To sum up the ICC’s definition of a “poor pitch”, it is one that “does not allow an even contest between bat and ball”. True, the bowlers had a ball exhibiting their craft while playing on my surface, but the bounce off me was largely true, there was no deceit there. Be it the Kanpur track of the India-South Africa Test in 2007-08, or the Kotla pitch in the 2009-10 ODI between India and Sri Lanka, or the dangerous Nagpur wicket in the India-South Africa Test in 2015-16, or even the 22-yard strip used for the South Africa-India Test at the Wanderers in 2017-18 — all sported uneven bounce and thus were termed “poor”. I was not that bad, surely. Neither did I trigger outrageous turn.

The ball skidded off my surface faster in this Test. The reason for that could be the extra shine put on the pink ball by manufacturers. Red ball, white ball and now pink ball... I have seen it all. Now who is to blamed for experimenting in cricket? Want to blame me for that? Go ahead.

Truth is, while many things can be pitch perfect, there will seldom be a perfect pitch. But that doesn’t take away anything from the game, it only enhances its character, it’s competitiveness. And I am proud of that.

Stat-o-sphere

⚫ Joe Root’s 5/8 is his best figures in Test & First Class cricket.

⚫ Root is the ninth England captain to claim a five-wicket haul in Tests.

Joe Root on Thursday. Picture courtesy BCCI

⚫ The last England captain to claim a five-wicket haul in a Test innings was Bob Willis (5/83) vs NZ, at Leeds in 1983.

⚫ Root (5/8) meanwhile became the 13th bowler to claim a five-wicket haul while conceding less than 10 runs.

⚫ R. Ashwin became the 16th bowler and 4th Indian to claim 400 or more Test wickets.

⚫ Ashwin, playing his 76th Test, is now the second quickest to reach this landmark after Muttiah Muralitharan (72 Tests).

⚫ The three other Indians to claim 400 wickets are: Anil Kumble 619, Kapil Dev 434 and Harbhajan Singh 417.

⚫ Axar Patel’s 11/70 is now the best match figures in any D/N Test match. Pat Cummins (10/62 at Brisbane) and Devendra Bishoo (10/174 at Dubai) are the other bowlers to claim 10-wicket hauls in D/N Tests.

An exuberant Virat Kohli on Thursday. Picture courtesy BCCI

⚫ Virat Kohli has now won 22 Tests at home as captain in 29 Tests. He goes ahead of MS Dhoni who had 21 wins in 30 Tests.

⚫ This is India’s second two-day Test match. Against Afghanistan at Bangalore in June 2018, India had also won in two days.

⚫ This is India’s 9th 10-wicket win in Test cricket. This is their second such win against England. India had won by 10 wickets at Mohali in 2001.

Mohandas Menon