Ian Chappell hails Team Director Ravi Shastri for backing Team India

New Delhi: Former Australian captain Ian Chappell has hailed Indian Team Director Ravi Shastri for standing by his team when the pitch controversy almost took the shine of their series win over South Africa in the recently concluded Freedom series.

In his piece in Mid Day on Sunday, Chappell wrote "Indian Team Director Ravi Shastri quite rightly made the point that if the ICC was investigating the surface in Nagpur, then why wasn't a similar forensic examination being conducted on the Adelaide pitch, where the match was completed in a similarly short time frame?"

The International Cricket Council (ICC) had termed the pitch at Nagpur, where the third Test of the series was played as 'poor', with match referee Jeff Crowe, in his report, claiming the pitch was not suitable for international cricket.

"I watched some of South Africa's batting in Delhi on a pitch that was even for both sides and I'm not surprised they were exterminated in Nagpur. If South Africa continue to utilise flawed techniques and mindset, it won't matter where they're playing, they'll encounter difficulty," Chappell added.

"In many cases the technique and mindset were designed purely for survival. If you allow spinners to dictate terms for long periods with fieldsmen hovering round the bat, on pitches providing assistance, then survival will be brief," he explained.

India won the match inside three days, and series, thus ending South Africa's an almost a decade long unbeaten away run. The series opener in Mohali also finished inside three days, with spinners from both camps wrecking havoc.

Then, came a barrage of criticisms from everyone, targeting the Indian camp for taking home advantage.

But Shastri and skipper Virat Kohli maintain that there were no demons in the pitches.

In fact, only yesterday, Shastri bemoaned Indian batsmen's lack of application in turning pitches.