(Credit ICC)
The pitch for the India vs Ireland Group A match could spark debate. In its international cricket debut, the Nassau County International Stadium in New York witnessed a challenging pitch for batsmen. Sri Lanka’s innings ended at 77 runs, but what’s unusual is it took them 19.1 overs to achieve this score. South Africa faced similar difficulties, taking 16.2 overs to chase down the target.
India won’t be stepping into unfamiliar territory come Wednesday. Their sole warm-up match ahead of the World Cup took place on this very ground against Bangladesh. Although India’s top-order faced difficulties scoring swiftly initially due to a sluggish pitch, Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya’s aggressive batting propelled India’s total beyond 180. Bangladesh, in contrast, couldn’t replicate this performance. Even their seasoned batsman, Shakib Al Hasan, found it challenging to find boundaries, resulting in Bangladesh being restricted to 122 runs by India’s bowlers.
Should the conditions remain alike, another match with low scores could be in store. As of Tuesday, India’s captain Rohit Sharma remained uncertain about which pitch would be designated for their match against Ireland. “There is a square with four pitches. I’m not aware of which wicket we’ll be playing on. Therefore, the pitch we play on tomorrow might be conducive to batting. It’s all about adapting,” he informed reporters on the eve of the match.
“I didn’t get to watch the game. I was a little busy with my family who had arrived yesterday. But no, certainly I know how the pitch played, hearing from my other teammates, and we’ve got a lot of guys in the team and the support staff were talking about what happened in that game.
“But, again, all I can say is we’ll make the best decision possible for these conditions, whatever the best level we feel. We’ll just go to the ground and have a look at the pitch,” he said.
Rohit Sharma says India have all bases covered.
There are also concerns regarding the outfield. Whenever a ball is hit into the deep, it tends to grip the surface and spin backward.”Certainly, a lot of things are very uncertain in terms of the outfield and how the pitch will play. Like I said just now, it’s all about adapting and getting used to that condition real fast, because you don’t have too much time. And if the pitch plays well, we certainly know what to do on pitches that are playing well. When the pitch is doing a little bit, we know exactly what we need to do as a batting group. And also, the bowling group as well. It’s just not about batting. When you have a pitch like that, which is slightly helpful for the bowlers, bowlers have an important role to play as well,” Rohit added.
The Indian captain, however, remains confident in his team’s abilities. He stated that India is well-prepared to handle various conditions, with all aspects of the game covered.”We’ve got balance in all departments, whether if we need seamers, we’ve got seamers, we have good spin bowlers as well. So yeah, we’ll decide based on the pitch. Again, we’ve got to go and see all of that, including the dimension of the ground,” he said.
