The Chinnaswamy Stadium, particularly when it comes to the IPL, has been synonymous with runs, runs and more runs, with the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the ground being Virat Kohli, AB De Villiers and Chris Gayle smashing fours and sixes at will.
While the majority of those last ten seasons have been tilted a little too much in favour of the batsmen, what the Chinnaswamy pitch has always guaranteed is excitement – be that with some terrific innings or a brilliant run chase, which leaves everyone on the edge of their seats.
Until the tenth season of the IPL that is.
The Chinnaswamy in IPL 2017 hasn't been kind to the batsmen, with RCB, who rely so much on their superstars, suffering as a result, and the remaining teams just about finding ways to survive.
After the Sunrisers Hyderabad struggled to do anything remotely resembling a T20 innings in the Eliminator on Wednesday, it was the turn of the team that beat them – the Kolkata Knight Riders – to disappoint with the bat.
The Mumbai Indians bowled brilliantly on Friday in Qualifier 2 of IPL 2017, but the struggles of the KKR batsmen also had a lot to do with that tacky, slower-than-a-sloth pitch.
Try as any batsman might, they just haven't been able to get going.
And through the season, apart from that one assault from KKR in their league match against the Royal Challengers Bangalore, no team have been able to get anywhere near the kind of scores that has come to define the Chinnaswamy.
Just looking at the scores of the past two seasons gives you more than enough indication of just how much the pitch has changed and how big an impact it has made as far as the batting is concerned.
In IPL 2016, nine matches were played at the Chinnaswamy Stadium – seven in the league phase and two in the playoffs.
In those seven league matches, the first innings scores looked like this: 227/4, 191/5, 185/7, 191/6, 151/4, 248/3 and 211/3. So, that's an average score of a shade over 200 runs.
In the playoffs, the two first innings scores were 158 all out and 208/7, with that final score nearly chased down by RCB in the final, as the home team finished on 200/7.
Now, that might be a little too advantageous to the batsmen – you cannot have a team score 200 every time they step onto the pitch, but that pendulum has swung a little too much in favour of the bowlers in IPL 2017.
Here are the first innings scores at the Chinnaswamy in IPL 2017, where nine matches were played again, although one was abandoned without a ball being bowled: 157/8, 142/5, 161/8, 134 all out, 138/7, 158/6, 128/7 and 107 all out. The average score for IPL 2017 in Bengaluru is 140.6.
So, that's a difference of 60 runs in just one season.
While watching the batsmen hit the bowler for six or four off every ball is not fun, watching them struggle to even get the ball to the fielders in the outfield is even worse.
At the end of the day, how much ever you might want to argue, the T20 format is a batsman's game. The people who might otherwise have never watched a cricket match, come in to watch the IPL and other T20 games to watch those sixes and fours.
While you don't want to see scores go above 200 every time, you would like it to be in and around the 165-175 mark, especially at venues that are known to be a batsman's paradise and at a venue where the home team's strength is the batting – yes, the bowlers are unfairly treated in this format and yes that needs to change, but the change at the Chinnaswamy has seen it go from one extreme to another, and you don't want that.
The Chinnaswamy pitch did RCB no favours whatsoever in IPL 2017 and while the likes of Kohli, De Villiers, Gayle and the rest should have been good enough to adjust accordingly, nobody wants to see a team filled with such flair, time and again, struggle to score runs.
And nobody wants to see teams finish on 128/7 and 107 all out in playoff matches.
Yes, SRH and KKR batted poorly in that Eliminator and Qualifier 2, but had this been more like the Chinnaswamy pitch of old, they would have done a whole lot better and we would have potentially got to see two exciting matches – yes, yes, the Eliminator would have been a curtailed game anyway.
The Chinnaswamy Stadium is known for explosive batting in the limited-overs game, and the sooner the KSCA changes the content in the surface that has made this wicket so ridiculously slow, the better.
Hopefully, in IPL 2018, we will get to see the RCB of old – the one that goes slam-bang from ball one and sends those fans at the Chinnaswamy into flag-waving delight.
