Posted by Who was the winner here? Not England. Not West Indies. Not cricket. Not the crowd. After many calculations, we’ve deduced that the winner was, rather unexpectedly, Michael Flatley. Nobody wants that.
This match was like watching a dot matrix printer run off sheets and sheets of binary code. Something was happening and if you added up all the numbers, it looked impressive, but really nothing was of any consequence.
It’s often said that people want to see runs and boundaries, but that’s only true of one-day cricket. In the shorter formats, the aim of the game is to score more runs than the opposition and that’s it, so fair enough – runs are the commodity. In Test cricket the aim is to take 20 wickets.
There’s a general feeling that these flatter pitches are designed to guarantee five days of cricket and therefore five days of revenue, but surely crowds and viewers ultimately prefer a little of something to a lot of nothing. We owe it the world to ensure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.
We mustn’t let Flatley win.
Perhaps Flatley riverdancing on the pitch was exactly what it needed to make it more of a contest.
Or failing him, Shahid Afridi.
I’ve also read they build the roads to get 5 day Tests, yet curiously both the Sydney and Joberg Tests went into a 5th day yet yielded a result, good crowds and edge of your seat cricket.
Could it be that the groundsman are too scared to build a wicket on which their team might lose?
runs and boundaries are all very well, but in all honestly, nothing beats watching a middle stump go cartwheeling across the pitch, preferably if the batsman then practices the stroke he should have played.
and they bat and bat and bat!
and bat!
Hey ,never mind that did you see captain Strauss doffing his cap to every West Indies player ?
What a gentleman.
The Barbados flatty gave me an opportunity to get lots of chores done this weekend. Cricket needs to be seriously tedious to make chores seem more appealing, but, by jingo, the curator at the Kensington Oval managed it. Well done.
I just hope the track at Trinidad is more interesting cos we’ll really have the time this coming weekend to follow a fair old chunk of the game.
what a dull end to a test.
all the hundreds and the double hundred were impressive but not good to watch.
i’m very rarely bored by cricket.
thankfully TMS commentators actually brightened up the final day.
geoff boycott is noticeably more chirpy and less negative than he used to be.