The head groundsman of The Oval, Lee Fortis, has given a sneak peek on the pitch for the World Test Championship final between India and Australia. The pitch at the Oval traditionally offered true bounce and has been great for batting but there will be uncertainty over the functioning of the pitch as the WTC final will be the first-ever Test in June at the stadium.
Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin was making a video for his YouTube channel and previewing the WTC Final when ran into Lee Fortis and joked around with him. Ashwin asked him why he doesn’t make pitches suitable for spinners. He further questioned if the pitch will bouncy pitch.
Ashwin said, "You have always prepared good pitches. But today, some of our boys got hit on the practice pitches. So is it going to be similar? What do you think? It bounced a lot today. You don't like me? You don't get it to spin, right? Can we expect a nice and bouncy Brett Lee pitch?"
Reacting to this question, the pitch curator Lee Fortis talked about how the Oval will have a competitive pitch which has a lot of bounce. He said, “Good Oval Pitch. It will be bouncy that’s the one thing that I can guarantee, it'll be bouncy.”
Watch the video here:
Further talking about the pitch and the conditions, the Indian captain, Rohit Sharma stated that his team is not focusing much on these external factors in the press conference. He said, "We've been hearing, not much of cricket is played here in June."
"County season has been played here. We saw there was a game played a couple of weeks back here. It's not like it's the first game of the season happening on this ground. We are quite aware of what the conditions are, what is going to happen in the next five days," he further added.
