The outfield was cleared by ICC’s independent pitch consultant Andy Atkinson and match referee Javagal Srinath before the game, and despite Jonathan Trott’s comments that Mujeeb ur Rahman was “lucky” to avoid serious injury, Bangladesh over Afghanistan. An “average” rating was given for the victory. When his knee got stuck in the soft, sand-based ground.
Players on both sides were cautious when fielding in the deep during England’s 137-run win on Tuesday, with some deep fielders opting to deliver balls to the boundary rather than dive and risk injury. England’s coaches advised players to be careful in depth, despite the fielders’ usual desire to hit every ball to the boundary.
There are three more matches of the tournament scheduled to take place in Dharamsala – Netherlands vs South Africa (on October 17), India vs New Zealand (October 22) and Australia vs New Zealand (October 28) – and Curran suggested the England players are grateful that they Won’t join any of them.
“It was pretty bad,” Curran said. “I think we’re very happy to win that game without any injuries – both teams. It’s very important, and we don’t need to come back here.” Instead, they will travel to Delhi ahead of the match against Afghanistan on Sunday.
Curran played for Punjab Kings in Dharamshala earlier this year, but the condition of the outfield has deteriorated due to rain. He said, “Hopefully the outfield will get better: it’s not great, what’s happened to it.” “But I thought the wicket was really good. Luckily, we are all fit, and will head to Delhi.”
He confirmed that England players were discouraged from diving: “(The message) was just ‘be careful’ and you saw when Bangladesh fielded, they were quite careful too. Nobody got injured. “Wanted to see and fortunately, that didn’t happen. We had to bowl a lot of balls… We’re very happy that no one got injured in the next game.”
Fast bowlers from both sides reported difficult conditions in their run-up, with Reece Topley shortening his run-up to cope with the soft turf. “The feet are definitely a little heavier than usual on this outfield,” Topley told Sky Sports. “While running in to bowl, you didn’t even feel like you were reaching the crease.
“To be honest, I actually had to shorten my run-up because I wasn’t getting any distance in each step,” he said. “But it was a unique challenge on this ground, and we responded in the right way. Jose told us to get on with it, so we did.”
Bangladesh’s Taskin Ahmed said he found the conditions underfoot “tough”: “The outfield was soft. It was hard to run here. Everyone thought we were a bit unbalanced, or slipping in the run-up. But “The circumstances were not under our control, so we can’t make that an excuse: we should have adjusted better.”