Revealed: Why India Opted For Sluggish Pitch Against Australia In World Cup 2023 Final

India National Cricket Team opted for a sluggish pitch in the ICC World Cup 2023 final because of what happened in the Chennai league fixture against Australia. The reports in Indian Express suggested that Indian team management was worried after what the pacers did to their batters in the first game. 

India and Australia locked horns with each other in their first game of the tournament in Chennai. The MA Chidambaram Stadium offered a slow pitch but the likes of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins troubled them. Keeping that in mind, the team management felt that they could trouble them more in Ahmedabad. 

This was one of the main reasons why Indian team management opted for the pitch that was used for the Pakistan game. They expected that a slow surface would favor India more because they expected spinners to wreak havoc across the Australian batting lineup. Apart from this, they chose such a surface because it assisted skipper Rohit Sharma as well and he could easily take bowlers to cleaners. 

But things backfired for them as Australia thrashed India by 6 wickets. India opted to bat first but in the day batting was quite difficult. The pitch was very slow and India could manage just 240 runs. Batters struggle to get going with KL Rahul being the top scorer with 66 runs. 

However, things changed drastically as under the lights the ball came pretty well to the bat and batting became easy, of which the Australian batters took advantage and won the game by 6 wickets. Travis Head (137) slammed a staggering century and took his team home with the support of Marnus Labuschagne (58*). 

ICC’s chief pitch consultant Andy Atkinson not part of pitch selection in India games

Recently reports in Daily Mail suggested that ICC’s chief pitch consultant Andy Atkinson wasn’t allowed to take part in the process of pitch selection in India games and was virtually sidelined.

He also raised concerns over the pitch for the India-New Zealand semifinal at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium. The pitch for that game was also a used surface. The Rohit Sharma-led side won the game by 70 runs and advanced to the final.