After spending two hours in the morning on the ground, checking the length of the grass, giving instructions to the ground staff about watering the pitch, former India captain and curator Polly Umrigar sits on the concrete gallery steps of the Cricket Club of India to assess his work.

"Do you like it?" he asks politely.

The ground appears in top condition to host the Australians for their tour opener against Mumbai, starting on Thursday, September 30.

Without doubt, the shaven green lawn and seven pitches Umrigar has prepared at the Brabourne stadium wear a pleasing look. All this in less than a week.

Earlier report Brabourne prepares for the Aussies

"Rajbhai [Rajsingh Dungarpur] had to wake me up from my sleep to tell me about the game and that the ground needs to be prepared. After three days I had things under control. I have to think of the rain, and water the pitch according to the number of days remaining," explains 'Polly Kaka'.

He tells you patiently, "If the rain doesn't interrupt I will have to water the pitch every day. Little less on the 28^th, and no water or very little water on the 29^th."

It seems he doesn't want to give the Australian pacers too much advantage.

"No, no, I'm a neutral man. The Brabourne wicket has traditionally been very good for batting. It is up to the bowlers to extract pace from the pitch.

"When we used to play against people like Wesley Hall, Roy Gilchrist and Ken Mackay the ball would bounce around, but as soon as our medium-pacers started to bowl, people would say the pitch has become slow," he said, adding a dash of history to his take on the pitch for the Mumbai-Australia match.

"I don't think the Mumbai bowlers will be able to use the pace of the wicket," he laments, citing that Mumbai may miss the speed of Munaf Patel.

The bowler sustained a shoulder injury during the Irani Trophy game last week and has been ruled out of the match.

"Right now we have planned to play on the middle wicket, but I have prepared two extra [pitches] just in case. There are also four practice tracks ready. All we have to do now is mark the boundaries.

"The ICC rule says you have to keep at last three yards from the fence. I want to make the boundary at least 75-yards-long," he adds.

Umrigar again goes back in time to talk a little about how the long boundaries at the stadium caused injury to the fielders.

"We used to play with the fence as the boundary, and Brabourne is a big ground. As we neared the end of the day our arms would pain while throwing from the boundary. Vijay Manjrekar used to keep looking at the watch; '30 minutes left, 45 minutes left,' he would say."

Umrigar will also supervise the preparation of the pitch at the Wankhede stadium for the last Test of the India-Australia series.

His experience and mastery over the craft apart, he is unhappy that sometimes captains interfere and force the curator to do things their way.

This, he says, especially happens to curators who haven't played Test match cricket and thus are not regarded by the players.

"I remember the first time when I prepared the Wankhede wicket. It was a new stadium and the West Indies were playing the first Test there (1974-1975). Lance Gibbs came up to me and tried to push things around. I told him that his job was to perform in the middle.

"In 2001, (Sourav) Ganguly tried to tell me to remove some grass from the wicket. He got the same answer."

The story though is that even in the 75^th year of its existence, the Cricket Club of India does not have any modern equipment to maintain the ground. The drainage system is also not in place.

Umrigar had to borrow equipment from the Mumbai Cricket Association to get the ground in shape.

On Sunday, CCI president Raj Singh Dungarpur grieved about the "redundant machines" being used at an institution like the CCI.

Umrigar has no complaints.

Despite all the odds he has the Brabourne stadium ready to welcome the Aussies to another challenge in India.

Ask the Australians; they had their first practice session at the ground on Monday.