Harsha Bhogle is one of the most adored and respected cricket commentators in the world, and someone in whom the Indian fans take extreme pride for his achievements and commentary. However, the 62-year-old commentator got trolled on Wednesday for his tweet on the pitch in Rajkot during the 3rd ODI between India and Australia.
The pitch at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Rajkot remained true to its nature and history and was a really flat surface. After Australian captain Pat Cummins won the toss and elected to bat first, the Australian top-order of David Warner, Mitchell Marsh, and Steve Smith went all gung-ho over the Indian batters.
The Aussie batters were aggressive from the first over of the game – even Jasprit Bumrah leaked 51 runs in his first 5 overs – and mauled the Indian bowlers all around the park in Rajkot. Australia cracked 90 runs in the first 10 overs.
Until Marsh got out for 96 runs in 84 balls, Australia had smashed 215 runs in 28 overs. While a score of 400 looked very much plausible, after this, however, the Indian bowlers made a strong comeback to restrict the visitors for 352/7, which still seems a chaseable score on this good surface for batting.
During Australia’s carnage early on, Harsha Bhogle put out a tweet saying that the flat pitches are not healthy for ODI cricket.
“If we are going to make roads for pitches, at least we should push the boundary ropes back; certainly at grounds like this one that have the space,” Harsha Bhogle tweeted.
While Bhogle’s assessment seemed fair, fans pointed out that India had piled up 399 runs in the 2nd ODI in Indore. Fans called Harsha a hypocrite for criticizing the pitch in Rajkot when Australia were scoring heavy runs, while he hailed the Indian batters in the Indore game.
Here are some tweets of fans slamming Harsha Bhogle:
