Nine pitches in Chennai: how Roston Chase’s West Indies prepared for Bangladesh

Nine pitches. Black soil, red soil and a mix of both. Long boundaries. Pitches left to wear for one day, three days, five, as they wear in a match. Tracks with extra bounce for the pacers. Net bowlers who bowled like subcontinental spinners, and batters who batted like subcontinental batters. Twelve coaches watching every session.

This is how West Indies spent two weeks at CSK’s High Performance Centre in Chennai before they set foot in Bangladesh, where they won the two-Test series 1-0 on Monday. They took the first Test in Mirpur by eight wickets, Roston Chase taking 5-36, and drew the second in Sylhet, where Bangladesh finished 184-4 chasing 369.

Chase was clear about where the series was won. “When we usually come to Bangladesh the spinners eat us for dinner most of the time but I think that we are an improved unit in terms of playing spin. Also the preparation that most of the guys had going to Chennai and preparing in similar conditions in India, practising against lots of spin and working on areas that we weren’t so good at. I thought that it worked well and it just goes to show that when you prepare well you get results,” the West Indies captain said.

ALSO READ | Tilak or Gaikwad? Dhir or Axar? The riddle that KL Rahul leaves with

They are not the first to go to Chennai. In 2024, New Zealand’s Rachin Ravindra and Ben Sears trained at the centre before a tour in which their side lost 2-0 in Sri Lanka and then won 3-0 in India. West Indies are the latest visitors to use CSK’s HPC, a sprawling property on the outskirts of the city.

The Windies Test team with CSK’s HPC support staff. (Special Arrangement)

“We have taken a lot of care in getting the setup to world standards,” MA Satheesh, associate vice president and head of operations at CSK HPC, told The Indian Express. The facility has an 80m boundary from any corner of the pitch. “When it comes to pitches, we use clay from Andhra and that’s one of the best soils used all over the country. And then we got the red soil (Murum) is from Mumbai. And we have a mix of both.” Come here, he said, and it is like touring India.

The nine pitches are the centre’s real offer. West Indies trained on all of them, and nobody scrubbed or scratched a surface to turn it into something extreme. “If it’s preparation for Tests, we have nine wickets. Day one, then day three wicket and day five, which not many facilities will be able to provide. So if somebody has played on it for a day and then we don’t do much work on it, so it becomes a day two wicket. If we know a week or 10 days before a team is coming for a particular type of preparation we prepare accordingly. We don’t scratch, take out the grass or make marks or, you know, nothing artificial goes into it. So it’s as good as recreating the actual scenario in the middle,” Satheesh said.

Story continues below this ad

The HPC was first planned for the CSK players alone. Owners N Srinivasan and Rupa Gurunath chose to open it to visiting teams, with the skill trainers, coaches and bowlers that come with it. “With Super Kings Academy being in huge numbers and the number of players that we have access to, we are able to call upon net bowlers at will,” said Sriram Krishnamurthy, the global head coach of Super Kings Academy. “For instance, if Jomel Warrican, Joshua Bishop and Jayden Seales don’t want to bowl to their batsmen, we provide a range of different options. So it is not like they have to wait to land in Bangladesh to see how a batsman from this part of the world could bat in these conditions. And same with coaching resources. When the West Indian team were here we had about 12 coaches at every session.”

West Indies pacer Jayden Seales at the CSK HPC. (Special Arrangement)

Spin was always going to decide the series, and Sriram says the aim was to stop it from becoming a shock. “So, the biggest thing was to not get distracted by what they faced in the middle. We know that the wickets are going to turn. We know that the ball can go up and down. We know that they have good spinners. But how do we go about just focussing on what we do well. Because a Brandon King, as you would have seen, he’s got a different style of play than, say, someone like a Tagenarine Chanderpaul. And yet, both of them found success when they went there. And they found success sticking to their own game plans.”

Australia and England have used Dubai for stopovers, preparing in extreme conditions. Chennai, Sriram says, offers year-round weather and indoor facilities, and something harder to find. “It is not just a case of providing them with the volume of batting on rank turners. But it’s also giving them fair wickets. It’s also giving them the confidence. To say that, you know, this is what a good wicket could look like. And don’t be surprised if you get a good wicket. Like what West Indies got in that second Test.”