ARG as unready as Sir Viv Richards Stadium
There's been plenty of farce on the tour already but the Sunday Telegraph's Steve James thinks there could be more in store when the third Test gets underway
Cricinfo
25-Feb-2013
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There's been plenty of farce on the tour already but the Sunday Telegraph's Steve James thinks there could be more in store when the third Test gets underway. He says the Antigua Recreation Ground is as unready for Test cricket as the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium was on Friday.
Potential hazards lie in the stands, where the top tier of the famous Double Decker stand will be closed. Full of wonderful memories and history it may be, but the ARG has not seen functional attention for years. It looks tired and decrepit.
The outfield is unfit in a very different way from the SVR stadium. Instead of the beach cricket proposed there, the ARG outfield has been prepared for football. It is bumpier than the island's roads, which is saying something. In the Sunday Times, Martin Johnson takes aim at the ICC for it's "mindboggling ineptitude".
“Sceptrum Est Sceptrum”, should be the ICC motto, which roughly translates into “rules is rules”. If we went through the entire list of pettifogging examples it would run to toilet-roll length.
My own favourite involved Neil Mallender, the English umpire, during the last World Cup in the West Indies, when he was given the maximum mark allowable for decision-making, but docked five points for wearing two sun hats, one his own, and one belonging to the bowler. This, you might think, is not the kind of crime that should earn you lower marks than for raising your finger for a caught behind that’s missed the outside edge by the width of a Kevin Pietersen advertising logo, but Mallender had really no defence to the charge, given that he acted in direct, not to mention flagrant contravention of the regulation that clearly states (and you can’t make this up) that the hanging of extra sun hats should be confined to the official ICC belt clip.
Paul Weaver, on the Guardian website, says that while the Test at the ARG will stir warm memories, it will also unleash an anger, a fury at West Indies administrators who left a great cricket ground out in the cold to die.
The Rec - and what powerful memories of childhood those two words evoke - is more than just the stage where Sir Vivian Richards and Brian Lara played some of their most brilliant cricket. This is where the cross-dressing Gravy danced and where Chickie's Disco blared between overs, the ground which arrived on the international scene at a time when West Indies were in their swaggering pomp.
Over in the Nation, Haydn Gill says that when there appears to be reluctance by Antigua to host regional competitions, they should not get Tests.