Black soil and red soil are close to being two different sports

The clay content of a square decides whether the ball sits up or skids, and squads are picked as though every pitch were the same.

Two grounds, same country, same week, both described in the preview as a good batting surface. One of them will reward a batter who plays off the back foot with time to spare. The other will punish him within an over. The difference is not preparation or the weather, it is what the square is made of.

Soil high in clay shrinks hard when it dries and binds tight, so the surface behaves like a lid. The ball hits it and comes off fast and true, with bounce that stays consistent through the day, and cracks that open wide rather than crumbling. Soil with less clay and more silt or sand holds less tension. It breaks up at the surface, grips the ball, and takes the pace out of everything, which is why a spinner can get purchase there on day one and a fast bowler cannot get the ball above the waist by the middle overs.

You can see it from the stands if you know where to look. Watch the wicketkeeper. Standing back on a high-clay square he takes the ball around the ribs. On the other kind he is bending. It is not subtle once you have noticed it.

What frustrates me is how rarely selection reflects it. Teams pick a settled eleven and travel with it, then blame execution when the same combination that looked outstanding on a bouncy surface gets stuck on a slow one. The batters who thrive on carry are usually the ones who play late and let the ball come. On a gripping surface the ball does not come, and those exact players get stuck on the crease and caught at short cover.

The reverse is also true and it gets even less airtime. A batter who has built his game on soft-handed manipulation and hitting into gaps will look ordinary on a surface with real bounce, because his shots stop being controllable when the ball is arriving at chest height.

So the argument is not that one soil is better. It is that squads should be built with two batting cores and the honesty to swap them, rather than one core and a set of excuses.

Nobody does it because dropping a good player for reasons of geology sounds absurd in a press conference. It is still the right call.