Ricky Ponting might have blundered, but this man certainly gets it right. When he hands over the pitch to the players, Les Burdett knows exactly how it will play. At 27, he was the youngest curator to manage a Test-match wicket. Now at 57, he is regarded as the world’s best.

Burdett’s first love is Test cricket, and he derives extreme pleasure from the fact that the world’s finest will be in action on a stage set up by him. So Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid will play, for all practical purposes, their last Test on the Australian soil at Adelaide that he calls an “honest cricket wicket.”

“It’s so humbling for me that world’s greatest players will show themselves on a wicket of my liking. I have always prepared wickets where there can be good cricket. This Adelaide wicket is the best I have seen in my whole lifetime. Glenn McGrath took a look at the wicket this morning, and he called it a belter. I have watered it a bit this evening. There is a bit of grass and will pack it a bit tight with the roller. It’s flat and even throughout, so the batsman can have a go, the bowlers can have go, and the wicket here always assists turn from the third day. So there’s everything in it for everyone.

“The Adelaide wicket has always produced a result in Tests since 1991. Last time India played here, they won. Personally, I don’t like many runs to be scored; I would like to see scores of 350 on an average, but I never want the wicket to be the cause for any dismissal,” he said.

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