Draws And Quick Results

Trevor Chesterfield hits the nail on the head when he says that the ICC should identify serial offenders and blacklist the venues of drawn Test matches. But then again, the concerned people should also be penalised for preparing sub-standard pitches where the Test matches are over within the virtual blink of an eye, even if below-par teams like Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are not featuring. The Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai pitch in India's 2004-05 home series against Australia and the Eden Park, Auckland wicket during India's 2002-03 tour of New Zealand, are cases in point. Such pitches, though produce results, are more detrimental to the game's interest than those wickets where eight hundreds, including a triple ton, are scored within five days or where a team scores close to a thousand runs in a single Test innings.