"Curator makes pitch and everybody else stays out of it," says former Oz skipper Ian Chappell on pitch row
Ian Chappell on Saturday played down the controversy around the last-minute pitch change for the World Cup semifinal between hosts India and New Zealand.
The Indian team management had demanded a change of the pitch for the last-four clash with the Black Caps at Mumbai's Wankhede stadium on Wednesday.
The move drew frowns from a section of the English media and former cricketing greats, who questioned the last-minute sanction of the pitch change by the governing body of world cricket — the International Cricket Council (ICC).
Even before the game could get underway, Daily Mail, a British daily, ran a report claiming that the pitch was changed specifically on the request of the Indian team management.
The Indian team management wanted the semifinal to be played on a slower surface, the daily claimed.
The former Australia skipper refused to read too much into the controversy, saying it was the curators' job to make pitches and that of the players was to just play on it.
«I think the same as I've always thought; that the curator should make the pitch and the players play on it and it should be up to no one else other than the curator, the local curator,» Chappell said in an interview with Australia's Channel 9 Wide World of Sports.
«I've always said about every pitch — don't worry about World Cups, anything else — the curator makes the pitch and everybody else stays out of it,» the former Australia skipper added.
Amid the controversy, the ICC issued a statement, clarifying that its independent pitch consultant, Andy Atkinson, was made aware of the change of surface.
«Changes to planned pitch rotations are common towards the end of an event of this length and has already happened a couple of times.
