Written by Sandip GKolkata | November 17, 2025 06:39 PM IST 6 min readIn both innings at Eden Gardens, Ravindra Jadeja fell leg before the wicket to Harmer. Both times, he was guilty of playing with the bat behind the pad. (Express Photo by Partha Paul)The Eden surface was a minefield; it prematurely cracked, crumbled, and had variable hardness. This was a wicket which had no exact doctrine to embrace. It was where the old cliche, stick to the strengths, rings the truest. Attackers had to attack; stonewallers had to stonewall. In-betweenism was bound to fail. The vile nature of the pitch would have invariably played in batsmen’s mind, as Indians stumbled into in-betweenism and failed.ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW VIDEOOn an evil wicket, a batsman only sees the devils. A benign ball grows teeth, a boundary ball develops fangs, a routine good length ball sprouts wings, and the strip becomes a Loch Ness Monster. Batsmen, with jaundiced eyes, start seeing everything in yellow. It distorts the judgment, muddies perceptions, and makes batting look a more treacherous exercise than it actually is.But Gautam Gambhir’s observation that the strip was not unplayable was not entirely bereft of logic. “It might not be a wicket which is going to [allow you to] be very, very flamboyant, where you can play those big shots. But if you are willing to put your head down, definitely it’s a wicket where you can score,” he would say.But not every wicket owed to the pitch tantrums, or the tricks it played in the batsmen’s minds. Imprudent shot selection, flawed judgment, and clumsy execution of strokes, both attacking and defensive, co-conspired in the Eden batting murder mystery.Some shot themselves. Like Rishabh Pant in both innings. In the first, he tried to pull a Marco Jansen bouncer, delivered from around the stumps. Jansen is steeply tall, he coaxes discomfiting bounce, and the angle, sliding down the leg-side, was too narrow for Pant’s free-swing. He strangled himself and gloved the ball to the wicket-keeper. He didn’t suspiciously gaze at the pitch because he knew it was not the villain. He did not curse the strip in the second innings either, because he misread the ball’s flight and bunted a return catch to Simon Harmer. The South African off-spinner credited the wicket to fortune. The only slice of luck was that Pant didn’t throw the kitchen sink at the ball, which he does even when he has not reached the ball’s pitch. In both instances, the pitch had little bearing on him. The pitch rarely daunts Pant either. “It’s the way he plays, and he would continue to play like this,” Gautam Gambhir defended him. Gautam Gambhir’s tactics in the IND vs SA Kolkata Test were put under the scanner by Brad Haddin. (BCCI)ALSO READ | Poor pitch reduces India vs South Africa first Test to a farce in KolkataThe self-admonishment of Yashasvi Jaiswal when he lumbered back to the pavilion told a similar story of injudicious shot selection. He loves to slash/slap/cut seamers when they offer width. Nearly half of his offside runs are raised this way. But the left-arm seamer from around the stumps congests him. He perished in the first innings attempting to cut too close to the body. The cut, on the dual-bounced surface, was a risk-fraught option anyway. But the misadventure did not prevent them from eschewing the stroke in the second innings. He swiped and missed the first two balls before edging a fuller ball to the wicket-keeper. The missed slashes bothered him so much, as though his ego was bruised, that he hung on the back foot until he middled the shot. But Jansen, cleverly, pitched the fourth ball fuller. Jaiswal drove half-heartedly, with an angled bat, and nicked behind. It’s like shooting oneself in a garden of grenades.Story continues below this adA few over later, so did Dhruv Jurel. He was batting sensibly until a short ball from Simon Harmer winked at him. He pulls well, but fielders prowled in the deep, and the up-and-down character of the pitch elevated the shot’s risk. Worse, the ball stopped on him, stripping the impetus out of his shot. He held out in the deep when his resurrection act with Washington was budding.ALSO READ | Eden Gardens Test: India lose at home yet again, Simon Harmer leads South Africa’s famous winThe left-handed all-rounder, despite his smug defending and smooth footwork, endured lapses in concentration. In the first innings, he was getting a trifle fidgety before Harmer defeated him with a pearler. This was plain deception, rather than the pitch’s mischief. He fooled him in flight and drop, lulling him into a defensive prod. The ball straightened a smudge to brush the edge to the slips-man. He failed to decode his deceit in the second innings either, as another straightener, this time from Aiden Markram, devoured him. Washington is languid when he forward-defends, but when he gets beaten in the flight, he becomes a soft hunt for drop-masters like Harmer.ALSO READ | Temba Bavuma: South Africa’s Iron Man with a giant heart, undefeated and unbroken, leads from the front at Eden Gardens for famous winStory continues below this adRecurrence of mistakes was another fearful trend. In both outings, Ravindra Jadeja fell leg before the wicket to Harmer. Both times, he was guilty of playing with the bat behind the pad to an off-spinner who was getting the ball to straighten the ball into the southpaws. On neither occasion could he get his front pad out of the ball’s line.Gambhir would lament the inexperience of India’s batsmen. But apart from Jurel (8), Axar Patel (15) and Washington (16), everyone has accumulated more than 20 Test appearances, and inexperience can’t be a redeeming line. It was more a cause of bad ball-paranoia than actual bad balls inflicting damage. Hence, the mindfulness that swelled into fear, and in-betweenism. The jaundiced eyes.Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more. Catch all the action with real-time live cricket score updates and in-depth coverage of ongoing matches.© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd