Harbhajan Singh takes a dig at curator for Wankhede’s batting friendly pitch

After a high scoring encounter at the Wankhede stadium between Kings XI Punjab and Mumbai Indians, Harbhajan Singh took a dig at the curator via Twitter for preparing a pitch with no assistance at all for the bowlers. 453 runs were scored in 40 overs as Mumbai lost by 7 runs in pursuit of a target of 231 runs. The tweet read

Harbhajan conceded 45 runs in 3 overs and was carted for three sixes in his first over by Maxwell. While, most bowlers on the day returned with sorry figures, Jasprit Bumrah stood apart conceding just 24 runs off his 4 overs and picked up the crucial wicket of Glenn Maxwell who was threatening to cut loose.  Also, Mohit Sharma managed to defend nine 9 off the last 4 balls of the innings with a belligerent Kieron Pollard on strike who had scored 49 at the strike rate of over 200 at the time.

The fact that the wicket used for that match was a fresh one which is generally used for international matches only was one of the main reasons for the match to be such a run fest. Last year, England had chased 230 against South Africa in the T20 World Cup on the same pitch. These factors were known to the Mumbai Indians captain Rohit Sharma as he mentioned it being a fresh wicket at the toss.

The Wankhede pitch had also been criticized by Ravi Shastri when he was the team director and South Africa had piled on 438 runs in an ODI against India on the same pitch. The modern-day cricketer equipped with all kinds of data analytics is expected to be prepared for such conditions and adapt accordingly and so is the case with most of the players involved in the T20 circuit.