Former Pakistan batter Bazid Khan has, rather bizarrely, accused the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) of differential treatment for Pakistan and India in pitch preparation for Test tours. He believes that the ECB, and all other cricket boards, curate flat tracks that see matches last five days for India, but for Pakistan, they deliberately make tracks that see three-day cricket.
Bazid offered no proof for his theory and only mentioned that boards do it so they can extract maximum value from a tour of India, which brings with it the biggest audience base. His comments come after Pakistan lost the first two Tests against England, with the first game ending in three days and the second in four.
“When India goes to England, every Test match goes into
the fifth day. Why? Because if it finishes in three days, it’s a financial loss,” Bazid said on a Pakistan TV show. “So they made the pitches in such a way that, whatever happens, it lasts five days. It feels like every match ends in three days, but when India goes, it lasts five days. So it’s not like the nature of the pitches has changed [over the years], but they are making them like that.”
“They make better pitches—the hosts, wherever India goes. Because India has to generate full value; if their match gets over in three days, they suffer a loss. And wherever India goes, it’s a money-making tour for everyone. So in that, if you’ve got fifteen days of cricket scheduled and only twelve days of cricket actually happen in total, then that’s a loss for them. It’s fifteen days of cricket—they want to make it happen for fourteen, fifteen days,” he added.
Pakistan will have a drastically changed 11 for the third Test, which begins on September 9, after they dropped seven players from the squad after the first two defeats.
