India defeated Australia comprehensively in the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar series at Nagpur. In an apparent effort to perform better in the remaining matches of the four-match Test series, Australia sought to practice more at Nagpur in order to learn about India pitch before leaving for Delhi for the second Test which is scheduled to begin from February 17. But local curators derailed the plan of Australian team and this has left Australia great Ian Healy furious. He said that ICC must intervene and take action India’s “pathetic” act.
According to Cricket Australia, hours before Pat Cummins-led side was to go for a practice session in Nagpur but they were forced to cancel the plan as the pitch was watered by the local curators a day before.
Speaking on SEN on Monday, Healy said, “It’s really embarrassing the scuppering of our plans to get some practice sessions on that Nagpur wicket. That’s not good, that’s just not good for cricket. The ICC needs to step in here. For them to water the wicket unceremoniously when it was requested for practice is horrible and that has to improve.”
Earlier, Australia coach Andrew McDonald had said that the practice session in Nagpur was not “naughty boy nets” but was a chance for Australia to adapt to the “extreme” conditions.
“It’s pretty clear isn’t it, their intent with the surfaces they want to play on. We were expecting that coming in so as I said before, we’ve been really clear on what we expected,” he said.
“When we got here we got exactly that. They’re not naughty boy nets today (the planned session). We’ve got a big squad of 17 players so there’s different people on different training programs. There’ll be a couple of players from the game that will come down, so they’ll be seen at training. But it’s certainly not naughty boy nets, it’s just preparing for the next game,” added Healy.
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