TALK OF TOWN: SURFACE TENSION AT HOME

Some teams have spoken about their relationship with home curators, with a fair few expressing their unhappiness

- GOMESH S @Chennai

"WHAT was a little disappointing for me here, considering it's a home game, and in the IPL you've seen how teams have looked at taking a little bit of home advantage. From that point of view, you've seen the curator is not really thinking that it's a home game. I think maybe it looked like, you know, it was Punjab curator out here."

That was Lucknow Super Giants team mentor Zaheer Khan expressing his frustration at the way the surface for the clash against Punjab Kings behaved at the Ekana Stadium on Tuesday. "But I hope that this is the first and the last game when it comes to that, because you are disappointing the Lucknow fans as well."

It's been a hot-button issue over the league's first ten days this season. First, it came from Kolkata Knight Riders captain Ajinkya Rahane after the loss against Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the season opener. There was a war of words with the curator saying he wouldn't prepare pitches to benefit the franchise.

Last week, Chennai Super Kings head coach did not mince words about the conditions at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. "Well, as we've been telling you for several years, there is no home advantage at Chepauk," he said after losing to RCB. "We've been really honest with you, we haven't been able to read the wickets here for the last couple of years. We are trying to come to grips each day with what we get. We've just got to get better at it, but it's very difficult when they all look the same. It's not the Chepauk where you can just go and play four spinners. We're having to work really hard to try and understand what the nature of each pitch is."