England need 35 runs that felt absolute premium on Sunday evening at The Oval when even the old ball was seaming around a lot under the cloudy skies. But on the morning of the fifth day, the ball is less likely to move around that much, courtesy the heavy roller that England will undoubtedly use before the game starts.
Joe Root had mentioned it during his press interaction at the end of the fourth day’s play. “In terms of the roller, we’ll see. I haven’t got a crystal ball unfortunately, but it has made an impact so far throughout this game. Whether that changes on day five, we’ll see, but hopefully it works well in our favor in flattening things out.”
On the match eve, India’s coach Gautam Gambhir had a spat with the curator Lee Fortis over access to the playing square. Now, on the final day, the curator might well get his comeuppance with the heavy roller.
It’s the prerogative of the batting captain to choose the roller he wants: heavy or light at the start of the play, according to ICC’s playing conditions.
Heavy rollers tend to flatten out the pitch, crush the grass to the surface, and present an even surface without many dents. Resultantly, the ball tends not to seam around that much or go through invariable bounce.
The heavy roller weighs around 1-1.5 tons, and is used to compress the soil deeply. It’s said that it’s ideal for flattening and hardening the pitch – exactly what India wouldn’t want.
The curators talk about the importance of the direction of the rolling motion and even the speed at which its rolled. Rolling is usually done in multiple directions to ensure uniform compaction of the soil. Fortis or one of his men will start from one end and roll towards the other and then repeat the process in the opposite direction. Proper rolling with the heavy roller will minimise the formation of cracks on the pitch.
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Occasionally, the heavy roller can backfire too as it reportedly did to India at the Newlands pitch in a Test in Cape Town, South Africa in 2018. India’s target was 208 runs and the captain Virat Kohli wanted a hard-pressed pitch for the chase. And so he went for the ‘Big Blue’, as Newlands’s heavy roller was called. There is nothing scientific about it but the anecdotal evidence suggested the roller ended up spicing up the pitch. As it’s believed that more pressure exerted by the heavy roller leads to moisture being squeezed out to the top of the surface. And it can then help fast bowlers.
India would hope that something like this happens at The Oval, provided there is some moisture seeped into the surface. Even Flint, the curator of that NewLands pitch had told The Indian Express then, “The heavy roller draws moisture up from underneath, but I am not so sure of that .. it’s possible.”
Sachin Tendulkar’s masterstroke
It also depends on the water table on the pitch as once Sachin Tendulkar used it to perfection in his last Ranji Trophy game in 2013 before retirement. The match was played at Lahli in Haryana and Tendulkar told the Mumbai captain Zaheer Khan to take the ‘none of the above’ option when visitors were given “light” or “strong” options at the start of the final innings.
Years later Haryana wicketkeeper Nitin Saini spoke about Tendulkar’s “genius”. “In the second innings, Sachin Paaju refused to take the heavy roller and we were all surprised because the conventional wisdom says it would make the pitch more conducive to bat on. He made 79 not out and told us that since the water table is so high here, having the pitch rolled would have got the moisture out and made batting tough against the seamers. And we were like ‘we had played on this pitch all our lives and never thought of it!’.”
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According to the playing conditions of the ICC, it’s the batting team’s prerogative. “During the match, the pitch may be rolled at hte request of the captain of the batting side, for a period of not more than 7 minutes before the start of each innings, other than the first innings of the match, and before the start of each subsequent day’s play.” Further, Law 10(c) makes it clear on the choice of the rollers as :”If there is more than one roller available the captain of the batting side shall choose which one is to be used.”
