How to bore fans and influence nobody Print E-mail
Category: Shorts
Written by Luke Tagg   
Tuesday, 22 June 2010 00:58
The West Indies did their level best to hasten the death of Test cricket in St Kitts today with one of the most fantastically turgid batting displays I've ever had the misery to endure.

On a dead pitch, voluptuous with runs and pregnant with possibility, Shivnarine Chanderpaul managed to score just 16 in the morning session of Day 4, which itself yielded only 39 runs. Dwayne Bravo scored 53 runs but took 215 balls to do so, despite it being practically impossible to get out.

The Day 4 run rate was 1.90 runs per over, yet five centuries had already been made in the Test. It almost beggars belief.

I understand the Windies were determined not to lose the Test, but they were home and dry by stumps on Day 3. There was never going to be a spectacular batting collapse on that wicket, so they could have upped the ante on Day 4 and had a real go at levelling the series.

The South Africans weren't much better, bowling negative lines and not attacking the stumps. Their approach was understandable, however, as the Windies had the upper hand. They couldn't afford to give away easy runs - it was up to the Windies to go out and get them.

Winning this Test was the only way the Windies could have put themselves into a position to win the series, but they chose not to. Playing for the draw in this game means the highest they are possibly aiming for is a drawn series, which says a lot about the negative frame of mind that currently blights West Indian cricket.

I wouldn't expect them to play rash shots, but my hairdresser could have made more than two runs per over on that deck. It is, after all, the deadest pitch in Test history.

Chanderpaul and Bravo were clearly acting on instructions so it's a problem that infuses not just the dressing room but the dark, lonely corridors of cricket administration in the Caribbean too.

When you see stadiums as empty as Warner Park it's not hard to understand why. I'm not sure whether I should be saddened or angered by it - all I know is that it's not good, and it's not easily reversible.

The best thing to happen in the day was Mark Boucher's catch to dismiss Ravi Rampaul, which made him the first player in Test history to effect 500 dismissals (478 catches and 22 stumpings).

On a day that will rank as exciting as an old Wellington boot that catch was Christmas, an OBE and a dancing pink elephant in frilly undies all at once. Crazy, beautiful, extreme. Well played, Bouch.
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