Test cricket the loser as pitch, weather win in Trinidad

If you want a snapshot of the Trinidad Test - without having to wade through all the empty hours of rain and the futile attempts to play live cricket on a dead pitch - you could do worse than revisit the events of three deliveries of the 28th over of South Africa's second innings on Sunday.

Tristan Stubbs torqued the first of them to deep midwicket for two runs and with that his first-half century in his fourth innings. As Jomel Warrican shuffled in with the next ball, Stubbs recast himself, momentarily, as a left-hander and essayed an arcing four over backward point. With Warrican's next effort, Stubbs tried to repeat the midwicket treatment, but the ball evaded his stroke and hit him on the pads. He was clearly outside the line of off stump when he was struck.

Ahsan Raza said not out, and even the appealing West Indians wouldn't have disagreed. So Kraigg Brathwaite's decision to send the call upstairs wasn't about taking a wicket. It was about buying time. As Joshua da Silva said loudly enough for all present, including the stump microphone, to hear: "The rain is coming soon."

South Africa were 282 in front. India chased 403 to win at Queen's Park Oval in April 1976. But they had Sunil Gavaskar, who scored 102, and his brother-in-law of not quite two years, Gundappa Viswanath, who made 112. In the 35 Tests at this ground since, only once have a team made as many runs in the fourth innings to win as South Africa were ahead when Brathwaite referred frivolously - in February 1998, when Brian Lara's teams scored 282/7 to beat Michael Atherton's side.

The responsibility for bringing urgency to Sunday's play was South Africa's. This they knew. Consequently their runrate on the day, 5.95, was almost three runs faster than the 3.03 they reached in their first innings. Stubbs was central to that happening.

The human spaniel puppy needed no second bidding to impose himself on a situation designed with him front of mind. Stubbs hunted down his 50 off 42 balls, and scored 22 of his runs in fours and sixes; a bustling performance bursting with the ambition of youth - he turns 24 on Wednesday.

Stubbs' innovative innings was ended by a delivery from Kemar Roach that didn't get up. It evaded the South African's muscular smear to midwicket and uprooted his leg stump. With that his partner, Temba Bavuma, turned on his heel and informed Richard Kettleborough the innings was over. West Indies would need 298 to win - more than any team have scored in the fourth innings at Queen's Park Oval since Pakistan held on at 341/9, in search of 372, in April 1988.

Bavuma's hurry to get on with things and stay ahead of the rain was apparent from the fact that he did not change his shirt between innings: when he returned to the field the sweat he earned by his endeavour at the batting crease was amply visible.

Keshav Maharaj, who bowled all his 40 overs unchanged and took 4/76 in the first innings, was duly handed the new ball. His third delivery turned appreciably, took the outside half of the advancing Brathwaite's bat, and steepled into the covers, where Stubbs held the catch. The ball descended into Stubbs' hands from out of a sky turned slate grey by the clouds gathering from the east.

Brathwaite's rash drive seemed out of character. In his previous 168 completed Test innings, he had faced fewer deliveries than his three on Sunday only six times. But it was also true that, since 2002, no opener has been dismissed in the first over more often than Brathwaite's dozen times.

Six balls later Keacy Carty edged Kagiso Rabada into the ground and almost onto his stumps. In Rabada's next over only umpire's call - Kettleborough's - brought Carty a reprieve from being dismissed leg-before five minutes before the scheduled break for lunch. That was followed by the promised rain, which halted play for 65 minutes.

Mikyle Louis skied Rabada to midwicket 4.3 overs after the resumption. Another 8.5 overs after that, Maharaj had Carty taken low in the covers by Wiaan Mulder. West Indies were three down with 234 needed, and theoretically 46.1 overs were left in that match. Was South Africa's moment finally at hand, despite everything the weather and the surface had slung into their path?

Maharaj asked the question for four more of his overs before taking a break. For the first time in the 116.5 overs they had faced in the match, the West Indians didn't have the left-arm spinner wheeling in from one end. He would be back after a respite of five overs, but by then it hardly mattered.

The match had slipped away, as a contest and as something worth watching. That wasn't Alick Athanaze's fault, and it isn't fair on him that his 92, his career-best score, will slip all but unnoticed into cricket's database. Indeed, his patient, unflashy batting had much to do with South Africa not forging further towards victory.

But not as much as the rain and the pitch. Nothing can be done about the first, but the second is unforgivable. Why, given the choice, would you watch a match mired in mud as intentionally dried as the outfield was unintentionally wet? Why did it continue after the sorry state of the surface had been confirmed, which surely brought the sponsors and the ICC into disrepute by any objective standard? Why was it broadcast, considering the obvious self-harm it was doing to the game? Why shouldn't its Test status be in question?

Doubtless there will be whataboutery about the nine chances that went down - five by the South Africans, four by the Windies. The difference is that dropped catches are an accepted, if unwanted, part of the game. Pitches like this are not. They are, in every way, unacceptable.

As a snapshot of the cause of Test cricket's inexorable limp towards irrelevance, the 22 dull and dreary, dismal and disgraceful, damned and damning yards at the centre of this match should be kept in sharp focus. This game wasn't drawn. It was killed.