Newlands, old woes: Conditions remain India’s biggest challenge as they look to level series against South Africa
Newlands Cricket Ground towards the practice nets at the far end. One or two paused to turn left and look towards Table Mountain, the most magical backdrop to a sporting venue.
But, literally, all of them stopped to do something else. This was to look at the pitch, prepared by Broom Mong, the curator, who is doing the job for the first time in a Test match.
The curator hoped that the game would go deep. But, to counter the heat and the possibility that the wind that blows across this ground stops, a decent amount of live grass cover has been left on the surface.
Dean Elgar, who played the second of his 85 Tests here in Cape Town, and will give the game away at the same venue, suggested that the surface had been “juicy” in the domestic matches he had played here. Elgar made all the usual sounds about how you could get value for batting if you bedded down but that there was enough for the bowlers if they hit the right areas.
The heart of this matter, however, is that India’s eleven is likely to feature at least three batsmen who have little experience in these conditions.
Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer have each played one Test in South Africa and we know how that went for the trio in Centurion. From before the start of this tour, Rohit Sharma has said that each batsman needed to devise a way to make runs in these conditions. Plenty of hard work has gone into this in the nets, but the results are not evident yet.
After taking a long, hard look at the pitch, Rohit said that it did not look too different from the surface in Centurion, with the only difference being that there was a touch less grass on this one.
