Oh, for some life in the track

Mike Atherton joins the chorus demanding the end of lifeless pitches. He writes in the Times that the most dramatic moment in cricket - the fall of a wicket - is something the game is forgetting all too quickly.

When the game offers no result — no chance of a result, more importantly — no fluctuating fortunes, no interest and no drama, what else but dry statistics is there to talk about?

What the ICC’s press release should have said, of course, was that the umpires and the match referee had marked the Ahmedabad pitch down as unacceptably poor and that the groundsman’s penalty would be a period without international cricket.