Ever since the tournament began, the pitches for T20 World Cup in the USA and West Indies have been under scrutiny.
India played all their three games on a pitch that was recently laid again at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, New York raising eyebrows.
Nonetheless, India won all of its matches with scores of 97/2, 119 and 111/3.A high-innings score caters well to T20 cricket with the ball coming nicely on to the bat and flying off the blades of the hard-hitting batters.
Nassau had a wicket which had two faces; one could block it back while playing his shots. In fact both Rohit Sharma and Rishabh Pant sustained injuries in the match against Ireland.
Afghanistan became the second nation to qualify for the Super Eights stage by defeating Papua New Guinea by seven wickets at Tarouba’s Brian Lara Stadium on Thursday.
PNG were bundled out for just 95 runs in 19.5 overs to make this another low scoring game; Afghanistan then reached their target in 15.1 overs after a bad start.
PNG were 17/4 at one stage as Fazalhaq Farooqi took 3/16 runs off them during his spell.
Former Indian opener Aakash Chopra raised his concern at the nature of Tarouba’s pitch.
“The pitch at NY has been a point of discussion…so what’s happening at Tarouba? Still not an ideal surface for T20 cricket- too many deliveries skidding off it. Anyway, well done Afghanistan.” These were among Aakash Chopra’s comments posted on X regarding this matter. The previous match at this venue between New Zealand and West Indies ended up being another low-scoring affair as NZ failed to chase down a target of around 150 runs which resulted in a 13-run defeat.
Brian Lara Stadium will be hosting three games during the tournament and only time will tell if it will have more high-scoring games or bowlers once again control the game basing on how the surface behaves.
