Right at the end of the first session on second day at Nagpur Test, Sunil Gavaskar made a pithy comment about the roller.
“The roller makes a big difference. The roller Indians used levelled up the pitch in the first hour. That’s why we saw couple of wickets in the second hour, bit more turn and variable bounce etc”.
A light roller was used by the Indians on the morning before the start of play. The effect of the roller wears away after a while and the pitch starts to bake under the sun and cracks widen again in the second session. Hence more variable bounce and bit more misbehaviour from the pitch in the second session.
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A curator explains why a heavy roller is not used:
“Light roller will just disturb the top layer, especially on turners. And as the day progresses, the second it will break up a lot under the sun. But if you use a hard roller, it will break up the entire thing – bottom layer as well and there is chance it will crumble.
Especially the red soil, as it is in Nagpur, it can tend to crumble under heavy roller. If the soft roller used, it will take just the top off and bottom stays intact,” he told this newspaper.