Cricket Australia official rubbishes claims of Oz pitches designed to give advantage to home team

Melbourne, Jan 22(ANI): Cricket Australia official Harry Harinath has rejected claims that pitches of the Australian venues were designed to give an advantage to the home team.

His comments come after Indian bowler Ashish Nehra, who played against Australia in 2003-04 series, had claimed that both the appearance and behaviour of the pitches have changed as compared to the earlier series.

Harinath said an international player should be able to play on all sorts of pitches.

"The current Indian team is not a bad team. It's a good team, but for reasons unknown to me they're not performing. But there should be no complaints about the pitches. If you're an international standard player, you should be able to play on all sorts of pitches," Harinath said.

"When our players go to India, they've got to play on what is available there. You can't have the same pitches all over the world; they change from place to place," he added.

Harinath stressed on the need for India to remain competitive after losing the series against England 4-0 and facing the prospect of a whitewash in Australia.

"Every team has periods of success and failure. What we do well in Australia is we prolong the periods of success ... if you have a good system you can shorten the periods of failure. The pathway and the training - it's all very important," he said. (ANI)