India have a history of producing spin-friendly wickets where the batsmen dominate the game for the first three days and then the spinners take over from day 4.
And one of the reasons behind that was India never had a good crop of fast bowlers. There were certain individuals who were fast bowling geniuses, the likes of Javagal Srinath and Zaheer Khan, but India never had a good crop of 5-6 quality fast bowlers.
Now they have got that crop. While, Jasprit Bumrah is the stand-out for India in all formats of the game, there are others as well who can be termed world class.
Whether you talk about Mohammad Shami or Umesh Yadav or Ishant Sharma or Bhuvneshwar Kumar, they all have this ability to bowl spells which can turn a game on its head. Since 2018, Indian pacers have bagged 241 wickets in 20 Tests at an average of 21.74.
And the fact that India have such a crop of fast bowlers now is the reason why they are not afraid of dishing out spicy pitches to the visiting teams.
The Holkar stadium in Indore which is going to host the first test match between India and Bangladesh is also likely to offer a pacer friendly pitch.
The chief curator at the stadium is using the red soil for preparing the pitch and the red soil is known for adding bounce to the pitch.
The Wankhede stadium in Mumbai which traditionally uses red soil is one of the bounciest pitches in India. It remains to be seen how much the red soil affects the nature of the pitch at the Holkar Stadium.
The curator of the Holkar Stadium was earlier praised by the former domestic warhorse Amol Majumdar during the match between Delhi and Vidarbha. The pacers from both the teams had tasted huge success in that game.
If the pitch assists the fast bowlers again, which is very much possible, India will have an upper hand as their fast bowling battery is much stronger than that of Bangladesh.
