The Transfiguration of the Brabourne Wicket

The Ind T20 League skippers have been hoping that the coin toss favours them across different venues more so at Brabourne. It is an exceptionally tricky ground with small boundaries, batting friendly strips and dew element which has been compelling the captains to elect for chasing after winning the toss. The pattern of the games held at this venue have resulted as expected. However, teams chasing haven’t necessarily won.

One thing which has remained constant at the ground is that the pitches have witnessed  high scoring games. Before Wednesday, 177/5, 210/7, 180/8, 189/9, 215/5, 175/8, 199/4, 217/5 were the scores recorded batting first.

But on Wednesday, the track produced a low scoring affair. The same surface, which manufactured 425 runs two nights ago, gripped and spun for the DEL vs PUN game. As much as  Delhi skipper Rishabh Pant won the toss and opted to bowl first again, the runs suddenly seemed hard to come by. Punjab once even struggled to even reach the 100 run mark. Thanks to the 21 run partnership between the pair of Arshdeep and Rahul, Kings mustered 115 runs.  

Unpredictable nature of wickets is not new to the game of cricket but it was really incomprehensible that the same surface, which produced more than 425 runs two nights ago, put the batters to the test on Wednesday (April 20) night. Punjab, with numerous  attacking batsmen in their ranks, including the in-form Liam Livingstone struggled to get going. In eight games prior to the Punjab Kings innings a total of 20 sixes were smashed here 

It was evident from the very beginning that the wicket was assisting the spinners and Pant  read the conditions well and deployed his spinners. Half of the overs were bowled by Lalit Yadav (2 overs), Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav (both four each) and they shared six wickets among themselves. "On a wicket like this I thought the ball was stopping a bit and that's why I used more of the spinners," Pant said after the game. Pant brought on off-spinner Lalit as early as the third over.

"The third over was bowled by our Lalit and he told me the ball is going slow," Axar Patel said of the delivery with which he claimed the wicket of Livingstone. "As the pitch was sticky, I bowled accordingly and varied my pace."

The metamorphosis of the Brabourne wicket on Wednesday night could perhaps be explained as one of the glorious uncertainties that the game is known to produce but the intrigue element in the wicket might well force the captains to have a rethink of their tactics of choosing to chase.