Like many others, I was taken aback by the conclusion to the first Test between Pakistan and England in Abu Dhabi.
Not by the home side’s barely disguised gamesmanship in slowing their over-rate to a crawl, but by the fact a game which for four days had hinted at nothing other than a run-laden stalemate, suddenly looked like spawning a positive result.
A combination of scoreboard pressure, a couple of appalling shots by experienced players who should really know better and tail-enders exposed to a sharply turning ball enabled Pakistan to almost conjure defeat from the jaws of safety.
Before the game was out there were a few comments being bandied about, by commentators and writers with a wealth of knowledge, regarding the pitch and how it was a poor advert for the five-day game.
Five is the key word here because their assessments weren’t based on the entire picture.
What, exactly, is Test cricket? A game played over a five-day duration or one scheduled for 80 per cent of that?
Yes, it was slow and flat and made for particularly attritional fare but that’s not a crime. Lord’s in the summer just gone was the same and the game finished with a day to spare.
The proof is always in the whole bowl of pudding and if a Test, as in Abu Dhabi, goes to the very end without petering out then, surely, that’s the whole point.
Anyway, enough bitching and back to the first point mentioned – that of the deathly slow over-rate.
Having seen enough of this kind of behaviour to last a lifetime, the only surprise was if you were actually stunned by Misbah-ul-Haq’s decision to slow things down.
In the same situation, every captain with an ounce of common sense would’ve done the same. For all the talk of a lack of spirit and, even more ridiculously, cheating, it was simply pragmatism very well done.
And the reason it exists and has done for a long time is there is no deterrent.
That may sound blindingly obvious and that is because it is.
A fine for the captain or even the threat of a less than punitive suspension is a punishment barely worth the book of regulations they’re printed in as come the crunch, teams happily revert to type.
Even with the threat of a ban, and I don’t know if that’s the case, if Misbah is placed in a similar scenario in the next Test, with England requiring a few runs in a short space of time, you can bet your bottom dollar his bowlers will find their shoelaces coming repeatedly undone or suddenly coming across as quite unsure as to their field placings.
I read Scott Pryde’s article from earlier in the week with interest and was quite curious about the idea of sending players off. I really don’t see how it would be enforceable – it is far from a black and white issue after all – but it’s a decent talking point.
As if the threat of penalty runs which, you would think, should act as a reason not to err on the side of sloth, but how often are these enforced?
I can recall England taking two hours to bowl their overs in a Twenty20 match yet they were allowed to do as they please with every excuse under the sun offered for their slackness.
As with everything, it all boils down to the willingness of the officials to be willing to take a stand. There really is no other answer.
Had Bruce Oxenford and Paul Reiffel been a touch firmer then more than the 11 overs could have been delivered. Not the full 19 mind you, as the light was never going to allow it, but a point could’ve been made.
Back at the turn of the century, Steve Bucknor, officiating in a Test between, ironically enough, Pakistan and England in Karachi, kept play going in filthy light to enable a conclusion to be reached and to prevent a slow over-rate from having any undue influence. It isn’t an unsolvable problem.
Where there’s a will and all that.
While a premature retirement isn’t the solution, he or England want, he may be forced into it if he can’t maintain a long run of matches.
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