Beauty of Pune pitch in eye of the beholder

Like a proud parent exhibiting a young child's artwork, Pandurang Salgaoncar interprets characteristics in the pitch he's prepared for this week's first Test at the Maharashtra Cricket Stadium that other expert judges seem at a loss to recognise.

Salgaoncar, once regarded as the fastest bowler in India but one who was denied an international cap because the nation's cricket board at the time (the early 1970s) was obsessed with spinners, can't hide his delight when describing his pitch for the match starting tomorrow.

"The ball will fly," he enthuses, to the delight of a dozen Indian reporters gathered around the wiry 67-year-old in the concrete catacombs of the ground that sits alongside the main Pune-Mumbai highway.

And which, having been opened in 2015, will celebrate the first Test match to be staged in the renowned university city that boasts a population of more than five million across its broader hinterland.

"There will be very good bounce," Salgaoncar continues, holding his right hand as if gripping a cricket ball and exaggeratedly flicking it upwards to suggest a track more likely seen at Perth than Pune.

"Seam movement there won't be much, but the ball will go fast.

"It is very compacted, it will not break up."

Before adding with a broad grin: "If I would have been playing on a pitch like this, the game would be definitely finished in four days."

But the assessment of a man - who reportedly was overlooked for national selection after he broke the finger of former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar in a domestic game on the eve of Gavaskar's elevation to the Test captaincy (he was then forced to wait a further four years) - is wildly at odds with what the Australians saw upon arriving at the ground for their first training session yesterday.

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Captain Steve Smith, coach Darren Lehmann and interim selection chair Trevor Hohns spent some time studying the surface prior to practice starting, not quite sure what to make of the mottled, mosaic surface.

Smith, with bat in hand, then returned to the centre with Hohns and took his batting stance while pointing animatedly to a number of the features at his feet.

Covered in a dendritic pattern of cracks, with sections that already appear to be breaking loose and a softness around the crease lines where the bowlers' front feet will land, it looked by all known measures to be a spinners' pitch.

That was certainly the assessment of one of Australia's front-line spin bowlers, Steve O'Keefe, who seemed in no doubt as to what awaited after examining the surface yesterday morning.

"It looks like it's going to spin," O'Keefe said.

"Potentially from day one - it's dry, it's got its cracks, it's what we'd expect. 

"It's what we've been talking about and I think it'll deliver on what it is - I think it'll play completely different to the warm-up match in Mumbai (the well-grassed strip at Brabourne Stadium last week).

"So that's fine, that's why we were in Dubai and trained in similar conditions.

"It's going to spin and stay pretty low and be pretty slow. 

"It's cut and paste to what we thought we were going to get."

Seam bowler Josh Hazlewood admitted that he rarely bothers to study the pitch before match eve, and even then he claims little expertise as to how a pitch is likely to play simply by looking at it.

But he seemed more convinced by his teammates' reconnaissance than by the self-assessment of Salganocar who was at pains to point out he prepares the pitch that is best for cricket and not one that falls into line with instructions issued to him.

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"A few boys said it looked pretty interesting," Hazlewood said.

"It could break up pretty quickly, spin can come into it pretty early on - day one and day two.

"You might see a few through the top but it's hard to tell sometimes with these wickets."

Salgaoncar was much less equivocal when he summed up his pitch, and the likely course of an historic Test that he believes will provide plenty of opportunities for batters on the first two days, but equal hope for quicks and spinners while carefully noting that "depends on the class of the bowler also".

And while politics might have played their part in dictating a career that yielded 214 first-class wickets (at 26.70) from 63 matches at a time when fast bowling in India was a thankless pursuit never brought with it a Test cap, he has no qualms as to what his legacy item will be.

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"I didn't play for India," he said, less than 48 hours before Pune celebrates the start of its inaugural Test.

"But I am one of the people who prepared the Test wicket, so I am happy with that also."

Test Squads

India (for first two Tests): Virat Kohli (c), Murali Vijay, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ravichandaran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Ishant Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Karun Nair, Jayant Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Abhinav Mukund, Hardik Pandya.

Australia: Steve Smith (c), David Warner (vc), Ashton Agar, Jackson Bird, Peter Handscomb, Josh Hazlewood, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Shaun Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Stephen O'Keefe, Matthew Renshaw, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, Matthew Wade

Australia's schedule in India

Feb 23-27, First Test, Pune

Mar 4-8, Second Test, Bengaluru

Mar 16-20, Third Test, Ranchi

Mar 25-29, Fourth Test, Dharamsala