Shaun Pollock and Sunil Gavaskar critcise the Wanderers pitch

The Third test has belonged to the bowlers thus far. Batsmen have struggled throughout the Test as the pitch has a lot of help for the bowlers. Both the teams have failed to reach even 200 in the first innings as the bowlers have dominated the proceedings. A lot of experts had predicted the ball to offer seam movement on the green pitch, but variable bounce has made life even more tough for batsmen.

Pitch inspection today

Sunil Gavaskar and Shaun Pollock did a pitch inspection after the second session of Day 2. The former South African captain was critical of the pitch as he carried out the inspection. He pointed to the seam movement offered by the pitch and argued that pitch is unfair to the batsmen.

“If you’ve got deliveries behaving like this on day two of a Test match it can’t be judged a good surface.” Shaun Pollock said during tea break.

He further compared the pitch to the Nagpur pitch when South Africa toured India in 2015. The Nagpur pitch was spinner-friendly and was deemed ‘poor’ by the ICC. The former South African captain argued that if Nagpur pitch was called poor then this pitch can’t be called a good surface wither.

“You go to India and get a surface like Nagpur where it turned too much. This can’t be judged a good surface because as a batsman you are never in.” Shaun Pollock added

Former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar said that pitches should be fair to both batsmen and bowlers. He argued that if a pitch is too favourable to either batsmen or bowlers then it can’t be called a good pitch.

“You can get a very flat surface which is totally in favour of batsmen. This is a pitch which is totally in favour of bowlers,” he said.

India ended the day 2, at 49/1 and have a lead of 42 runs which can be very handy on this surface.