Rohit Sharma has said that the two-day Test match in Ahmedabad was a "good learning curve" in playing spin against the SG pink ball and the experience will help India's batsmen better understand the behaviour of the ball in home conditions.
TECHNIQUE TALK
Rohit earmarks "adjustments" for playing spin against SG pink ball
Rohit Sharma top scored in the Ahmedabad Test © BCCI
Going into this third Test against England, a day-night affair, India had only played one such match at home and in conditions completely alien to what they encountered at the Narendra Modi Stadium. The Eden Gardens pitch against Bangladesh in 2019 had 6 mm of grass and provided assistance to India's fast bowlers who picked all the wickets in the Test match. In contrast, 28 of the 30 wickets fell to spin in Ahmedabad.
"We pretty much had no idea what it's (pink ball) going to do to the spinners. So it was good to understand the pace of the (SG) pink ball," Rohit said after India's 10-wicket win. "When you play the red ball, it doesn't come so quickly onto the bat. Whenever we play the next one, we need to make slight adjustments against the pink ball.
"It's (also) got to do with the conditions in the evening. The temperature goes down a degree or two plus there's the dew factor as well. But all in all, the pace of the pink ball is slightly quicker than the red ball. It is something that we need to adjust to as quickly as possible and understand what we need to do. (Because) whenever we play a pink-ball Test in India, it is going to behave like that."
The behaviour of the SG pink ball on dry pitches was a bit of a mystery going into the Test. India have conducted only 12 first-class domestic games with the pink ball across three years and all of them were played with the Kookaburra ball. Even that experiment was shelved in 2018, which allowed the batsmen with
