Red soil will become black. Bounce and carry will be fleeting. And don’t expect a rank turner.
In a nutshell, that is likely to be the nature of the pitch at Green Park in Kanpur, where the second and final Test of the India-Bangladesh series starts on September 27.
That is in contrast to the Chepauk pitch, where both teams’ seamers and spinners fetched good bounce. That was a consequence of the pitch being made of the red soil that was imported from Mumbai two years ago. The bounce was a key factor in both teams playing three fast bowlers. While the degree of turn was not huge, allied with bounce, the Chepauk pitch had enough for spinners too, as shown by the Indian pair of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, who took nine wickets between them in Bangladesh’s second innings.
The slower nature of the Kanpur pitch is bound to change both teams’ selection plans. It is likely that the third seamer could be replaced by a third spinner. That means one of Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel could get a chance for India.
While it is likely to be a toil for bowlers, batters could breathe easy and potentially score big in the absence of any tricks from the surface. In the 2021 Test, Shreyas Iyer scored a century and a fifty on debut and Tom Latham put out a rare masterclass from an overseas batter in defence against Indian spinners, scoring two half-centuries.
Additional reporting by Mohammad Isam
