IND vs AUS: Ian Healy terms scuppering of Australia practice session at Nagpur as ‘horrible’
Calling the Vidarbha Cricket Association decision to not let Australia hold a practice session post the loss an innings and 132 runs against India in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on Saturday last week as ‘horrible.’
Former Australian wicket-keeper Ian Healy slammed the VCA authorities for watering the pitches at the Nagpur stadium. According to Cricket.Com.au, a member of the VCA ground staff was seen watering down the pitches at the stadium resulting in the cancellation of practice sessions of Australian players post the Australian team’s embarrassing loss on Saturday.
“It’s really embarrassing the scuppering of our plans to get some practice sessions on that Nagpur wicket. That’s not good, that’s just not good for cricket. The ICC needs to step in here. For them to water the wicket unceremoniously when it was requested for practice is horrible and that has to improve,” Healy said while speaking on SEN Radio on Monday morning.
With the Australian team suffering an innings and 132-run loss in the first Test of the four match Test series, the spotlight has been on the Australian batsmen with none of the Australian batsmen managing to cross the fifty-run mark in either innings. While the talk before the first Test match was about the curators watering selected areas of the pitch, the Australian team did not play any tour game in India. Post the loss, the Australian management had planned to have a practice session. According to news.com.au, the Australian team management had requested that the post match watering of pitches be delayed for them to have a practice session.
Australian coach Andrew McDonald told SEN Radio that the planned practice session was not “naughty boy nets” but in accordance with their plans to practice for the next match. The coach also talked about the Indian management’s intent with the kind of wickets they want to play on.
“It’s pretty clear isn’t it, their intent with the surfaces they want to play on. We were expecting that coming in so as I said before, we’ve been really clear on what we expected. When we got here we got exactly that. They’re not naughty boy nets today (the planned session). We’ve got a big squad of 17 players so there’s different people on different training programs,” McDonald had told SEN Radio earlier.
