The captain of the Indian cricket team, MS Dhoni, has said that he would not mind seeing a green top at Lord’s Cricket Ground for the second match of the ongoing test series between India and England.
The first match which was played on a dead wicket at Trent Bridge had finished as a draw. Nobody from the Indian camp or from the English camp for that matter was happy with the kind of surface produced there.
The bowlers had an absolute nightmare there. Neither did they get lateral movement nor did they get any bounce and as a result of that, whenever they induced the edge, it fell short of the fielders.
According to Dhoni, a country should always produce wickets for which it is known. For example- England is known for seaming wickets and thus there should be always be grass on their wickets. Similarly, on Indian tracks, there should always be some turn available.
Talking to the reporters ahead of the Lord’s test, the Indian captain said, “When a test series is played in India, you don’t want to see placid tracks and people getting double hundreds on it easily. What you want to see is how people adjust against turn. Similarly, in England, you want to see people getting tested on seaming tracks.”
The English captain, Alastair Cook, also had something similar to say when he was asked what kind of wicket he would like to see at Lord’s.
In the words of Cook, “We are confident about our batting. We are good enough to score big if we are set on any surface and we have got bowlers who can get early wickets to pressurize the opposition. But, that can’t happen on a dead pitch. Some life needs to be there in the surface.”