Pitching

Naradaa does not know much about cricket. ‘Gilli Danda’, he had seen. Also, a game called ‘Talama’ from south, he had witnessed. Both these games, they say, resemble cricket, but both these games did not need a pitch.

Naradaa has heard ‘pitch’ in relation to music. One is not supposed to sing out of pitch. Naradaa, (I must state here that we are not talking of the great Narada Muni of the epics, who is a great musician and Veena exponent), technically does not know enough to tell authentically what a pitch is but know that once a song is started in one pitch, then the whole song should follow the same pitch. Naradaa had tried it but could not follow it by any standard. If Naradaa is a singer, he is a multi-pitched singer. He can start a line of a song in one pitch and end it in another.

Losing a pitch while singing is easiest for Naradaa. He even got ridiculed by a reality show judge, saying ‘You lost the pitch at several places. Better run after it and catch it…’

But it seems in cricket, pitch is very important. In fact, there is a phrase that says ‘catches win matches’, which is now going to be modified to ‘pitches win matches.’

When it is a match between two countries, the host country cricket board and captain and whoever is involved are permitted to arrange pitches to suit their strength – fast bowling or spin bowling or batting or whatever, or so Naradaa is given to understand. The person making the pitch (for whatever reason, he is called a curator; probably he is supposed to cure bruised egos?) will be instructed by the host captain to make the type of pitch of his – the captain’s, not the curator’s - choice.

There are cases where wrong pitch selection by curator had resulted in home teams losing matches. In fact it can almost be said that it is the pitch that decides the outcome of a match, other than the ‘toss’ – which decides who is getting the first use of the pitch.

The biggest problem comes when you do not know what your strength is. Or when what you thought your strength was, actually happened to be the opponent’s strength. Or when one just doesn’t have any strength.

Naradaa asks, ‘isn’t it better if the team becomes strong in all aspects of the game? Then you do not have to depend on the pitch or toss or weather.’