By Admin 
India bowling coach Morne Morkel expressed his surprise at the way the Eden Gardens pitch deteriorated on day two of the first Test between India and South Africa.
“To be honest, even we didn’t expect the wicket to deteriorate so quickly,” Morkel said after Saturday’s play wherein 15 wickets fell. “Looking at it the day before the game, the morning of the game and after the first couple of overs, I thought this was a good wicket. So, it’s a bit unexpected.”
“But that’s the beauty of playing in the sub-continent. You need to adapt quickly. We want to play to our strengths; saying that, we have got quality with both seam and spin. We have covered our bases.”
The South African stated that leading into the contest the team management thought its bowling attack would have a lot of heavy-lifting to do, quite contrary to how things have unfolded.
“The conversation leading up to the game was that there’s going to be a good wicket and a lot of hard work for us,” Morkel quipped. “We planned and focused more on how we were going to target the South African batting line-up.
“We sort of took the conditions out of the equation and said that we will adapt, play it by session by session. We definitely thought it was going to be a good wicket and deteriorate as the match went on.”