T20 World Cup 2024: Timely Alert For Rohit Sharma’s India After South Africa, Sri Lanka Criticise Nassau County Pitch
New York: Rohit Sharma’s India got an idea how the pitch at Nassau County Cricket International Stadium would behave after the pitch at the New York venue receive criticism from both South African and Sri Lankan captains following a low scoring Group D match at the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024 match. Drop-in pitches exported from Adelaide has been laid at the Nassau County Cricket International Stadium, which would host eight T20 World Cup 2024 matches, including the marquee India vs Pakistan clash on June 9.
Drop-in pitches usually need time to settle in and requires heavy rolling. With the pitches being installed at the New York venue just a month before the tournament proper, it was clearly evident that there was more work to do on the strips. Batting first, Sri Lanka were shot out for their lowest T20 total of 77 and South Africa had to struggle before securing a six wicket win in 16.2 overs on Monday.
“The batting was a little up and down… quite a tough wicket but we found some way to score runs. It’s a tough one from a batting perspective,” said South African captain Aiden Markram at the post-match presentation.
“You try to take the pitch out of it, but if the ball misbehaves or there’s low bounce, it’s just one of those things and hopefully we can take some learnings out of it,” added the skipper, who scored 12 runs. He said playing on the pitch would give his side some advantage ahead of the upcoming games.
“Obviously fortunate that we have our next two games here, so we know what to expect. But important to assess as you move around.” Sri Lankan skipper Wanindu Hasaranga said it was not a high-scoring pitch. “Our batters were looking at 160-170. To be honest this a 120 wicket, especially with our bowlers.
“We went with our bowling strength, that’s why we batted first. We wanted to put up a good score and defend it. This is early in the tournament, as a team we wanted to do much better especially in the batting. We know we have bowling strength, so if our batters do well we can go further,” he added.
Although India scored 180-plus in their only warm-up game against Bangladesh a few days ago, it is still not sure which wicket India would play their campaign opener against Ireland.