Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has held himself up to public ridicule by going on about the need to squeeze out the home advantage with a pitch designed to let the ball turn square and aid spinners.
His obsession continues with doctoring pitches despite the humiliating experience in the Mumbai Test, in which top English batsmen played spin better and their specialist spinners bowled more effectively than the Indians to level the Test series one-all.
Teams enjoy home advantage in all sports. The curator at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, who has been credited with having a mind of his own on subjects like how to prepare sporting pitches that would support good cricket rather than any one side, showed up Dhoni’s methods of piling pressure on those who prepare pitches. So much so, the BCCI had to put a gag order on Prabir Mukherjee, while also sending someone across to help him see the matter in the light of the Indian team’s argument.
Where a whispered word to the team management and the cricket board may have sufficed, Dhoni came up with these strident calls in the media, and must now hope his team uses the favourable conditions to get ahead of England again. While home conditions were exploited splendidly by England and Australia to batter India into submission in eight Tests in 2011-12, Dhoni’s declining team has been seen to struggle at home itself. Time then for serious introspection rather than such childish repetition of the home advantage mantra.