India will play the West Indies at the iconic Eden Gardens in their last T20 World Cup Super 8 encounter on Sunday evening. The match has now taken on the colour of a virtual quarterfinal since the winners of the match will advance to the semis along with South Africa from Group 1.
Ahead of the all-important tie, there is good news for the Indian camp. As per a local curator at the Eden Gardens, the pitch is going to be conducive to batsmen. The Indian batsmen haven’t exactly been themselves on slow, sluggish decks so far in the tournament. So, they would definitely welcome a surface that favours batsmen.
The curator by the name of Sujan Mukherjee let on what the pitch would be like. He also informed that the Cricket Association of Bengal president and former India captain Sourav Ganguly looked happy after inspecting the deck. On Friday evening, Ganguly examined the pitch in the company of Mukherjee and chief curator Ashish Bhowmick.
“Ganguly appeared happy seeing the preparation of the pitch which was last used for the second World Cup match. It’s a typical Eden wicket full of runs and there would be something in it for the bowlers too,” Mukherjee told PTI.
But then the West Indies would fancy themselves too!
Like the local curator informed, the match will be played on the same strip that saw the first 200 score of the tournament on February 9, in the match between Scotland and Italy with the former, a late replacement for Bangladesh, going at the European side hammer and tongs.
However, if the truth be told, the West Indian side should be happy too with a batting wicket. In fact, they are more likely to beat India on a batting wicket as they boast some of the best power-hitters in the game at present. Going back to the India-West Indies semi-final in the 2016 T20 World Cup at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai… the Caribbean team had stunned the hosts on a batting friendly wicket, chasing down 190-odd that day. Then in the final match which incidentally happened in Kolkata, Carlos Braithwaite hit England superstar Ben Stokes for four successive sixes in the last over to help Darren Sammy’s men to their second T20 World Cup title.
Sammy is here in India with the West Indies team, in the capacity of the head coach this time. Familiar with the Eden Gardens, he can certainly impart a lot of important information to his charges.
