Kohli's genius apart, Chinnaswamy is an insult to cricket

Yes, Virat Kohli is a great batsman, and yes he is in surreal form, but to take those numbers on face value would be foolhardy. The reason? Chinnaswamy.

The first taste of all this happened when Brendon McCullum started off the IPL in 2008 with a plundering 158. 'Wow', 'what a joy to watch', 'what an exhibition'. But of course that raises the question - an exhibition of what?

What is cricket if not a contest between bat and ball? Why would I even watch a match if a batsman can score a century in a rain enforced 15-over a side game? No disrespect to the batsmen, in this case the indomitable Virat Kohli, who can obviously only punish what they face. But one must agree that as a bowler, it is demoralizing and even futile to play such a game. 

Sachin Tendulkar said that the bats are getting wider, and the batsmen now have the luxury to swing at any and everything. Top edges and mis-hit shots have crossed the boundaries before, so why not try it again. If McCullum’s innings wasn’t enough of a testimony to Chinnaswamy, a certain West Indian made sure the ground was never to be taken seriously ever after.

(At the Chinnaswamy stadium)

Chris Gayle, all to his credit, played a breathtakingly boring 175-run knock against some mediocre bowlers, and one soon-to-be-mediocre Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and without a second thought he obliterated them all. Even more humiliatingly than how Daenarys vaporized the Dothrakis khals. Gayle’s carnage was so monotonous that it became cringeworthy after a point. How do you even make a pitch as flat as that? The pitch curator was surely just out of a job from one of those swanky pancake places near MG road and was probably auditioning for a job at improving the pot-holed strets widespread across the city.  

Coming back to Gayle, fans thought the joke was on the Golden State Pune Warriors, while in fact it was always on the Chinnaswamy Stadium. A stadium that has made even the un-battable bat.

Not so long back, Chinnaswamy also became the Melisandre to Yuvraj Singh’s Jon Snow of an IPL career. Yuvraj Singh is probably the biggest big-name flop in the IPL, not just one season, but year after year. Then it should come as no surprise that Yuvraj Singh’s only half decent contribution in any IPL season, came when he was brought to life, and bought by, the Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Talking about jokes, this season has taken it to another level. Virat Kohli has scored 865 runs in 13 innings, scored 4 centuries, become the highest run-scorer in IPL history, become the first batsman to score 4000 IPL runs, has scored the maximum sixes, participated in the highest partnerships, picked up the most wickets, holds the purple cap, etc. It’s crazy isn’t it? None of us, the post-Bradman era fans, have seen anything like this ever before.

But what takes the gloss away from these superhuman-esque numbers is the fact that most of those have happened at the Chinnaswamy. 3 of the 4 centuries Kohli has scored have been at Bangalore at a strike rate of 190+. The only century he scored elsewhere took him 63 balls at a strike rate of 158. The difference is stark.

It’s nauseating to see the ball sail past the ropes more times in an innings than you would see it sail past the batsman's willow in the entire match. It’s just painful to watch, and tiresome to dance to. For the cheerleaders even.

Yes, the second innings is also played on the same pitch, but when a team scores 200+ runs in the first innings, the chasing team is always under the conch. That is where Vijay Mallya is a smart businessman. Evasion aside, he also accumulated some of the biggest hitters in world cricket and ensured that the RCB team is batting heavy at the top. First there was Dilshan, then Gayle, then Yuvraj, then de Villiers, then Watson. Even KL Rahul has come in and gone bonkers.

Kohli, of course, has come from Delhi to Bangalore and stayed through, establishing himself as the mainstay of the side. But unfortunately staying in Bangalore could only hinder his legacy over time. Imagine Kohli doing this insane stuff consistently at pitches like that of the Eden or the Kotla. 

The reduction in overs and compression of cricket as a whole has not left a lot of room for bowlers to manoeuvre, which is why the least the curators can do is give the fans a more even contest to spectate. Or else before long, cricket could be walking on its last legs, and Chinnaswamy would have played a huge part in the evaporation of the sport in general, and extinction of the species known as bowlers.

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