Out of the hotel gates in sector 35b, down the Himalaya Marg, through sector 46 into sector 65 and you find yourself at the gates of the Punjab Cricket Association IS Bindra Stadium. It is a familiar ground since England have played three Tests here since 2001, but not necessarily a happy one, losing two Tests at the venue and drawing one.
Chandigarh is a new city, built in the 1950s, with much of it designed by the French architect Le Corbusier. It is laid out in grids and sectors. The signposts at the many roundabouts possess no names, just a host of numbers that look like a sudoku puzzle and they refer to the various sectors.
Enter the stadium, which possesses a palatial pavilion at one end, step on to an outfield that resembles a putting green, appreciate the coolest breeze yet encountered in India and stare at the pitch, which is our chief entertainment 48 hours before a Test match, and what is there to see? More sectors that were probably not designed by a Frenchman.
Sector one stretches from the popping crease for about nine feet: the grass is beige-coloured and shorn tight. Sector two is in the middle of the pitch: there the grass is a little greener and a little longer; sector three at the other end of the pitch mirrors sector one. In years gone by one could witness something like this, though with greater contrasts, at Trent Bridge in the 1980s when Nottinghamshire were winning championships.
The pitch is dry; by the time the game starts on Saturday it will be drier still and the grass will probably be shorter. The ball will turn; it is just a question of when.
Traditionally, there has been a little encouragement for the quicker bowlers here – especially in the wintertime and in the morning and evening sessions. This is the likeliest place on this tour for England to play four pace bowlers and two spinners but the odds are against this.
There was no official word on the make-up of England’s preferred XI on Thursday , but we could draw a few conclusions. If Jos Buttler does not play on Saturday then an awful lot of newsprint has been wasted over the past couple of days. There was no indication of a change of heart, though all the batsmen in the squad had a long workout in more excellent facilities.
There were two absentees from the nets. Stuart Broad was back at the hotel, a moon boot still enveloping his painful right foot. The assumption is the earliest he could return to the fray is in Mumbai, the venue for the fourth Test. Zafar Ansari was in the pavilion with a strained back. There are worse pavilions to wander around – as well as countless photos of cricketers of the past there is a library that doubles as a press conference room, which contains vital reading. A quick glance revealed The Observer’s Book of Cricket (from about 30 years ago), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, not by Shane Warne but L Frank Baum, Roy Jenkins’s biography of Churchill and The Origin of Species.
The suspicion is Ansari might be interested in all these books and that he might have ample time to dip into them over the next week. The back spasms make him a risk and, in any case, he endured a wretched game in Visakhapatnam. His inclusion would be as surprising as a Buttler omission.
With Chris Woakes certain to return in place of Broad, England must choose between Gareth Batty, Steven Finn and Jake Ball – two fast bowlers as gentlemanly as they come, just like Woakes, or the feistiest of off-spinners. Any inclination to play the extra paceman is enhanced by the performances of Adil Rashid in Visakhapatnam and Rajkot.
Rashid has 13 wickets in the series, which is more than anyone else. It would be hyperbole to describe him as miserly but he has exhibited more control than before. Bowling in the nets does not count for much but his rhythm and control and his eager and regular interaction with Saqlain Mushtaq on Thursday were more good signs. Alastair Cook trusts him more than ever before. Hence playing two spinners would not be such a risk.
But the pitch looks sufficiently dry for Batty to embark upon his second Test of the tour, having played in the victory in Chittagong. Now that Parthiv Patel has replaced the injured Wriddhiman Saha behind the stumps, there will be one more left-hander for him to bowl against. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, a very clever swing bowler, might replace Umesh Yadav, who has bowled with great zest but not much success so far in the series.
