Chennai to greet Bangladesh with a red soil pitch: Reports

The MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai offers two distinct kinds of pitches for the home side to choose from. 

One is pitch with the black soil base, where the ball stays low and takes slow turn. The other is a red soil based pitch which gets roughed up easily as the top layer gets disturbed easily after being baked in the sun. It generally offers more turn and consistent bounce than the black soil pitched. 

According to reports in the Indian Express, Chepauk is all set to dish out a red soil-based track for Bangladesh, who are to play a two-test series in India, beginning on September 19 in Chennai. That would be something different for the visitors, as they mostly play on clay-rich black soil pitches in Bangladesh. 

Team India already reached Chennai and have had a long drawn practice session at the main ground on the centre wicket in preparation for what is a long Test season. After the two Tests against Bangladesh, they’ll face New Zealand in three Tests at home before flying out to Australia for the five-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy. 

While practising on pitches that already had rough patches ahead of the good length, Indian batters also tailored their preparation for facing Bangladesh’s spin strength, especially left-arm spin. For that, they employed Tamil Nadu’s best left arm spin talents Ajith Ram and M Siddharth and P Vignesh in the nets. 

The bowlers practiced in the nets which had pitches with a lot more red soil content. India and Bangladesh have both announced their squads for the series. You can find them here. 

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