As the BCCI’s pitches committee chief Daljit Singh and local curator Shiv Kumar answered endless questions about the Green Park pitch, there was one man sitting in the stands with an all-knowing smile on his face.

Chotelal grew up around the central square when his father was a groundsman. Today, at 52, he can boast of a three-decade long association with the Green Park ground. He knows the 22 yards like the back of his soiled hands and his claims to be the real son of the black soil around here aren’t exaggerated.

His views about the brownish dry spin-friendly surface are obvious and predictable — identical to the ‘early help for pacers and spin-friendly later ‘ quotes dished out Daljit and Shiv Kumar not far away — but it’s his perspective to the pitch preparation that is an eye-opener.

In these days of curator-activism, Chotelal’s observations give an interesting twist to the green or brown debate and a grassroot-level viewpoint to the ground realities. For someone who has last count of the number of pitches he has prepared, there are two incidents that stand out in his mind. “In 1983, I prepared a green pitch for the India vs West Indies game and the consequences weren’t great,” he says. It was the game in which Malcolm Marshall’s fiery bouncer saw Sunil Gavaskar’s bat falling from his hands and India suffering an innings defeat. What followed was brickbats and Chotelal’s shelved his green experiment for good.

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