While the Indian team was focused on winning matches after matches against the mighty South Africans, the attention was shifted to the Nagpur Pitch which was labelled "poor" by match referee Jeff Crowe in a report submitted to the International Cricket Council (ICC).
It all started when the third Test between India and South Africa got over within three days time with hosts comprehensively beating the visitors by 124 runs in a very low scoring match. Indian Captain, Virat Kohli, chose to bat after winning the toss and the home side got all-out for just 215. However the South Africans couldn't even manage 100 runs as they were bowled out for a paltry 79 with spin trio of Ravichandran Ashwin (five), Ravindra Jadeja(four) and Amit Mishra (one) taking the wickets. In the second innings, Proteas (185) scored more than India (173) but the first innings lead proved enough for the hosts.
ICC's pitch and outfield monitoring process in 2010 states that a pitch is said to be poor if the pitch offers excessive seam movement at any stage of the match, if it displays excessive unevenness of bounce for any bowler at any stage of the match or offers excessive assistance to spin bowlers, especially early in the match. Also if the pitch displays little or no seam movement or turn at any stage in the match together with no significant bounce or carry, thereby depriving the bowlers of a fair contest.
In Nagpur, the ball was doing a lot for the spinners from the very first hour of the first day’s play and on the second day, the South African batsmen looked completely out of sorts against the India spinners. In fact, in the whole series, the visiting batsmen, except for AB de Villiers, were extremely uncomfortable against spin. India won the the four match series by a margin of 3-0 in which two matches couldn't go further than three days. Spinners took 95 wickets in total and Indian spinners accounted for 61 of them.
While India celebrated the win, the cricketing world didn't seem too happy with the turning tracks in India and especially in Nagpur. Players like Australian legend Matthew Hayden took the matter on social media to express discontentment about the Nagpur pitch through tweets like "How disappointing it is to see the quality of Test Cricket reduced to what we are witnessing."
BCCI got the backing of the Indian team director Ravi Shastri who retaliated by saying: "let them sit in Australia and talk about their pitches. Tell them not to waste their time about Indian tracks. Come and play here." Hayden took exception to the comments and said that after 103 test matches he deserves a voice and that he would have it for the betterment of cricket. Kohli defended the team in a contest against the pitch. "Even we lost in England in three days but no one said anything," he said.
BCCI cited the example of Australia-New Zealand Day/Night Test in Adelaide, "Adelaide game ended inside three days. Most of the wickets there were taken by seamers. Can that pitch then be termed 'poor' for offering excessive seam movementIJ”