"Curators hardly got time to prepare a pitch"- India's batting coach Vikram Rathour after Day 1 of IND vs AUS 3rd Test

Team India's batting coach Vikram Rathour felt that the curators of the Indore pitch for the third Test shouldn't be blamed as they had pretty less time to prepare for the game.

It is evident that the third Test was originally scheduled to be played in Dharamshala, but after an inspection, it was declared that the ground wasn't ready to host the game. This is when Indore was selected as the venue and the curators got the pitch ready with a pretty slim deadline.

Speaking to reporters after Day 1, Vikram Rathour explained why India weren't shocked with the amount of spin that the pitch had to offer.

"We do prefer to play on turning tracks. That's our strength. To be fair, this is just a one-off wicket. The pitches for the first two Tests were not bad at all. It was drier than we expected. To be fair to the curators, they hardly got time to prepare a pitch. They had Ranji season here, it was pretty late that they decided that the match was being shifted here. I don't think they got enough time to prepare the pitch."

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No Indian batter played a poor shot: Vikram Rathour

India were bundled out for just 109 in just about a session and a bit more as the batters just couldn't adjust to the spin-friendly conditions. Yet there were some questionable shot selections made by players like Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja, etc.

However, Rathour feels that the batting failed just because they had an 'off day' and claimed that no batter was poor in his shot selection.

"It was a challenging wicket for sure. It did more than we expected. There was moisture on the surface which made the ball turn sharply. Definitely, we could have scored more runs but I don't think anybody played poor cricket or rash shots. It's just that we had an off day as a batting unit."

Currently, Australia are in the driver's seat in this test match with a lead of 47 runs and still have six wickets in hand. The hosts will need to find some inspiration to stage a comeback and avoid defeat.