India’s victory in the last Test at Kanpur in the recently concluded (drawn) series against South Africa reminds one of a famous Indian film song, “It happens only in India.”

Indians prepared an uneven pitch which was not of Test standard by any stretch of the imagination. The tactics that they use to pull off a victory are not employed in any other part of the world. That’s why with the help of its powerful electronic and print media, the Indian cricket team always maintains a certain hype which leads the common man to believe that the Indian side can turn into the best team in the world.

India definitely has a reasonably good record at home. In the last five years it has played 23 Tests, won eight and lost five, while 10 ended without a result. However, most of their victories came on Indian soil. There is no denying the fact that every team takes advantage of its home conditions, but not at the cost of boring or unimpressive cricket. The Kanpur wicket was awkward and had uneven bounce. Indians are used to playing on such pitches whenever they intend to come back in a home series. In fact, it has now become a trend to develop such wickets there.

At the end of the series, South African captain Graeme Smith, though he didn’t complain about the pitch, couldn’t resist himself and said, “When you are playing on a wicket like this, the margins are very small.”

Take the example of some odd things that were seen in the third Test. Despite the fact that Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh was the architect of its victory, Saurav Ganguly was named Man of the Match because he was the top individual scorer of the game with 87 runs. Also, a part-time bowler like Sehwag wrapped up the South African second innings by getting three wickets in just eight overs, and the touring team only managed to pile up a total of 121 runs.

The Kanpur Test also reminds one of the Mumbai Test that was played between India and Australia in 2004-05. Before the match started India was trailing by 0-2 in the four Test series and after the third Test ended without any result, the touring team had already won the series. India just wanted to make the defeat least disgraceful. Therefore, a very rough and uneven wicket was prepared to tame the in-form Australian batting line-up. Resultantly, the visitors surrendered before the hosts and India won the Test in just two days. Aussie skipper Ricky Ponting had this to say about the situation, “Disappointing. It’s fair to say that the wicket was nowhere near even being close to Test-match standard… 40 wickets falling in just over two days of a Test is pretty much unheard of.”

Interestingly, in the Mumbai Test, just like the part-timer Sehwag at Kanpur, the Australian non-regular bowler Michael Clarke got six wickets, but failed to save his team from losing the match. Ricky Ponting also said, “I guess the match referee will write a report about this wicket, and obviously that’ll be sent to the ICC. Let’s hope there is an inquiry, just because it’s so disappointing. As a player you want to be tested under different conditions and in different countries, but that’s just going a little bit too far.”

Even Pakistan faced a similar situation in the 1999 Test series when after losing the first Test our team had to play at Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla’s under-prepared pitch, where the Indian leg-spinner took all 10 wickets in an innings, enabling India to level the series.

It can be safely concluded that these are unsporting tactics that India has been using to win Test matches on home soil. Hello ICC!