St Kitts: where pitches go to die Print E-mail
Category: Shorts
Written by Luke Tagg   
Sunday, 20 June 2010 23:21
South Africa would have been satisfied to have scored three centuries in a declared first innings of 543/6 in the second Test against the West Indies in St Kitts - until the Windies proved it wasn't exactly a rare, monumental feat.

I started penning this piece roughly two minutes after the dismissal of Brendan Nash for 114 off 148 balls, courtesy of an AB de Villiers moment of magic in the field, with the score on 372/3 and Shivnarine Chanderpaul still at the crease on 121*.

In case you were wondering whether this pitch is the original green mamba from hell, with more spite in it than a supermarket cashier, allow me to assure you to the contrary.

It's an interesting story, actually, about the groundsman who demanded a dead pitch. Word has it that pitch was tortured, beaten, stabbed, shot multiple times, doused in acid and set upon by rabid dogs - long after its corpse had ceased to twitch.

When it was finally delivered - obviously lifeless - to the groundsman, he nonetheless double-tapped two rounds into its head with a .45, just to be sure.

It's quite possibly the deadest cricket pitch in history. Dead, deader, the deadest.

I'd like to think it was killed deliberately in order to provide the Windies with a fighting chance in the series, but the only other Test to have been played at Warner Park was a similarly rotting hulk. Dished up over 1,400 runs.

Someone has to ask the obvious: how did this groundsman ever get his job in the first place? Surely the production of a decent Test wicket would be high up on the list of his employer's job requirements? Didn't he go to pitch school? What does he have against grass?

It's probably just sour grapes on my part. I was looking forward to a nice little series whitewash and instead am left counting centuries faster than they can be made and wondering where it will all end.

Bugger. Oh well. Enjoy the draw.
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