Evan Flint, the man who produced the Cape Town pitch that gave India and South Africa equal opportunities to win the first Test, worries mainly about two things
Evan Flint. Pic/anand vasu
Evan Flint, the man who produced the Cape Town pitch that gave India and South Africa equal opportunities to win the first Test, worries mainly about two things. The first is the 22 yards under his care at Newlands, and the second is Travis, his Staffordshire terrier who waits patiently for his master to come home to be taken for a walk.Flint, who played club cricket in England and was Kevin Pietersen's peer at Maritzburg College - (he doesn't really like talking about KP, being a shy and polite guy) - has only once worked outside of his beloved South Africa.
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When the DY Patil Stadium was being built in Navi Mumbai, it was Flint who was asked to come over and give the square of the main ground his tender loving care. "It was 2006 or 2007, before the first Indian Premier League. Dr Vijay Patil built a stadium and he imported 200 tonnes of Centurion soil," Flint told mid-day. "I think the idea was to almost use it like a training base for India before they went to Australia or South Africa. Maybe they could go there first."
Getting 200 tonnes of soil from Pretoria to India by ship was relatively easy. Apparently, there was no waiting or customs dramas because it was for cricket, but what happened later was something else. "All the Indian curators were saying we're not touching this, we're not going anywhere near it," recalled Flint from his eight-week stay in which he tried to get the ground match-ready. "Then I came along, did my bit and I said I don't want it either. Because the temperature was so high, you could prepare a proper pitch and it would just crack too early. It became a bit of a nightmare. Shame, it didn't quite work."
The authorities at the DY Patil Stadium stuck with the novel experiment as long as they could, but when it became clear that it wasn't working, they had no option but to dig it all up and use local clay and soil, something every maidan groundsman or mali knows how to work with. And the rest, as they say, is history.
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