Pitch is again in the news at Railways cricket. Try as it might, the government body could never turn it into the ideal, utopian one that benefits everyone. Instead, it has always come up with dead tracks that has put everyone, notably reporters, to sleep.
Think it was done on purpose as Railways almost always came out trumps on dead tracks, Cheaply Live commented last evening.
Honestly, I’d rather not comment on it as I have friends there and I asked Cheaply to shut up and not dig deep into it.
But the fact of the matter is that Railways is planning some change this year. They have got soil from beyond Palwal (a village district in Haryana on the outskirts of Delhi) and hope that the grass will grow on it and all that will support good cricket there.
It means the wicket at the Delhi’s Karnail Singh Stadium is being relayed and they are digging about one foot deep for it.
But heavy rains in the capital this year seem to have caused some disruption in plans.
They would have wanted to hold the trial games – for selection purposes --- in Delhi only but now they are being forced to shift it to Varanasi. The games will begin on September 16 and will comprise 36 players divided into groups of three each.
The Ranji, T20 and one-day squads will be picked from among the probables.
“We didn’t want to risk the pitch for the Ranji games will be held on it later this year,” Railways sports officer Ashok Diwan told me. “We want to conserve it for bigger games later in the year.”
Hope it provides us with better, livelier cricket this year. Their curator Malhotra, in fact, had attended BCCI’s pitch conclave recently.
But for now, the action and faction (oops! shit, here I go again) shifts to Varanasi.
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