Life's a beach for the cricket fans

During the last couple of winters teams of illustrious ex-pros have competed in a beach cricket tournament across Australia, good fun cricket with lots of banter, and no small quantity of lager consumed. Today international beach cricket descended on the Test Match arena in farcical scenes.

Firstly it’s clear that the right decision was made in the end, and it’s good news that some kind of game has been salvaged by introducing an extra test at the traditional St John’s Recreational Ground in Antigua (although it remains to be seen what kind of condition that’s in).

But let’s be clear this is a day of shame for West Indian cricket, far greater than the shame England felt being bowled out for 51 last weekend. This is a different kind of let down all together, by abject failures of the Antiguan officials, groundstaff, and the match referee.

In this day and age, to not be able to produce a pitch that can be played one, one that can be realistically not expected to cause injury to the participants is disgraceful. For no-one to realise, or at least act on it until after the game had started is arguably even worse.

For crying out loud, the date for this test has been in the calendar for near on a year, in the weeks and months leading up to the game, surely someone could have said, “hang on a minute guys, we might have a bit of a problem here…” Instead, somewhat appropriately, everyone seems to have buried their head in the sand and hoped somehow it would all turn out ok in the end. It didn’t.

And then, with concerns growing the match referee Alan Hurst yesterday inspected the pitch and declared it not satisfactory, but playable, well that’s a joke too. It was patently unplayable to sound surprised that the bowler’s run ups were not fit for purpose is a dereliction of duty. He actually came out and said that they couldn’t know how the bowlers run up would perform until the morning of the match. Seriously, how difficult is to ask someone to run up to the stumps a couple of times to see whether it’s like running through Skegness beach? (albeit without the washed up contraception and empty beer cans).

The spectacular win in Jamaica will have given cricket in the region a huge boost, inspiring enthusiasm and belief in equal measures, for this to happen so soon after is a crying shame for all involved, players and spectators alike.

There’s a great tradition of beach cricket in the West Indies, it’s a pity it couldn’t stay on one of Antigua’s 365 natural beaches and out of the Sir Viv Richards stadium.