Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
I think that if Pant had got out early on, then you may have seen India shut up shop. You're right about fourth innings totals - historically, 200 was considered a big score to chase, but the records show that in the last twenty years or so, bigger totals have been reached quite often. This can partly be explained by the fact that there are much more test matches being played today, but I'd say a bigger cause of the change is that pitches have changed - they always used to deteriorate as the days went by, but now it's not unusual to see pitches at their worst for batting on the first day and then gradually flatten out into something that gets easier and easier for the batsman.
I would agree that pitches are cared for much better these days (I wonder if the groundsman is under fire after yesterday).

The skill of the modern day batsmen must be a big factor though.

I've been critical of batsmen getting out to "one day shots" in test matches as tests going the full five days seemed to be getting less and less.
Some of the shots played by India, the like of which I don't think I'd seen in test cricket in the 70's and 80's, probably 90's too, were superb tho had India lost that game, I'm sure we would be calling into question their wisdom.
The Twenty 20 form, which I wasn't a huge fan of initially but has grown on me, must have had an influence.

Whether it was the flat pitch, poor bowling or perfect batting conditions, the huge run total still had to be got and what a way to get them.