1st over: Pakistan 1-0 (Shan 0, Abid 0) A gentle looser after a hectic yesterday strays down leg, and they run a leg bye. Meanwhile, in commentary, Warne says that Glenn McGrath remembers every single one of his 563 Test wickets, which is a remarkable thing; Athers gets in there first, and chuckles that he’ll be featuring heavily. Maiden.
“Nothing can be more ‘cricket’ than spending a week, with the governing bodies and media, talking about the need to use more common sense to make up for lost time and delays.
So far in this test, we have seen players go off just before lunch. Restart play when lunch should be taking place, and then go off for lunch when the weather is much better.
Decline the opportunity to start at 10:30 because the weather MIGHT not have been as good, only for the weather to take a turn for the worse 5 minutes after play started, thus missing out on an extra half hour play. Oh, and then we lost another half hour at the end of the day because it got too dark.
And then we learnt our lessons from the previous day, by making assumptions on a weather forecast, meaning again, we have lost out on another half hour of play, plus whatever we are going to inevitably lose at about 10 past 11.
Stuff like this is what puts so many people off cricket. We’ve had an incredible summer of cricket, under the most ridiculous circumstances, with two great series, brilliant matches, captivating sessions, stunning achievements, and sub stories, and of course the ridiculous (I’m talking about you and your run out Stuart Broad). But instead, the archaic rules are holding the sport back.”
But is this the kind of thing that puts people off, or is it the kind of thing that irritates the likes of us? I’m not doubting that we can and must do better, but ultimately I think that people are put off Test cricket by the very nature of Test cricket, and because they’re not lucky enough to have someone help them love it.