West Indies v England

Toss: England. Test debut: N. A. M. McLean.

After the third ball of the match flew off a length past the England captain's nose, one alleged sage turned to his neighbour in the press box and whispered: Well, we can rule out a draw, that's for sure. This was proved wrong with astonishing rapidity. After just 56 minutes' cricket, the contest - which enthusiasts had been looking forward to with relish for months - was called off in sensational and, at this level, unprecedented circumstances because the umpires considered the pitch to be dangerous.

Sixty-one balls (and a no-ball) were bowled in that time, and the England physio Wayne Morton came on to the field six times to attend batsmen who had suffered direct hits from Ambrose and Walsh. Neither bowled exceptionally well, by their standards. It was unnecessary; almost anyone could have propelled a hard ball lethally off such a surface.

Jamaican officials had decided to re-lay the pitch to avoid losing West Indies' traditional advantage over England by playing on the slow, low surface Sabina had become. However, work started less than six months before the game, and there was no time for the soil to bed down. The wicket was not as ugly as the fissured horror of Perth a year earlier, but it never rolled flat, and failed to bind together.

It rapidly became clear that the batsmen were suffering more than the normal terrors England players expect when confronted with a fired-up West Indies attack. They lost three wickets quickly: Butcher for a golden duck. But observers quickly sensed these might be trivial details. The ball was moving so unpredictably that a serious injury looked a near-certainty. Umpire Venkat was on the walkie-talkie to referee Barry Jarman after three overs but, under Law 3, the fitness of the pitch remains the umpires' responsibility whether there is a referee or not, and Jarman could only offer moral support.

After Stewart was hit for the third time and Thorpe for the second, the end was in sight. Atherton, the England captain, came on to the field and got agreement from his opposite number, Lara, that the game could not go on. After ten minutes' discussion, the umpires led the players off and the final decision to abandon came nearly an hour later. Stewart was left on what was widely agreed to be the most heroic nine not out in history.

SHORTEST TEST MATCHES

England had chosen to bat in the belief that such a pitch could only get worse. There was loose soil on the top by the time the game ended, so this seems logical enough. We will never know what might have happened had West Indies batted first and faced the far less imposing England attack. It is hard to imagine that Lara, in his first Test as captain, would have cried for mercy in front of a Jamaican crowd, largely hostile to his appointment instead of their hero Walsh. In any case, he would have put England in.

The Sabina crowd, once famously volatile, reacted to the disaster phlegmatically, which was perhaps another signal that, in Kingston, football now excites more passion than cricket. The 4,000 present got their admission fee returned, but that hardly represented a fair deal for the 500 or so who had travelled from England, and legal action was threatened, though it fizzled out. The Jamaican officials who decided to dig up the pitch so soon before the Test were accused of bungling inadequacy by local players.

It took only a few hours to arrange a replacement Test. There was no chance of playing in Jamaica, since there was no alternative stadium. Both Bridgetown and St John's were unavailable, because of work going on there, and there were fears about whether either of these grounds would be ready for their own Tests. Instead, it was decided to scrap England's first-class game against Trinidad, and play an extra Test at Queen's Park the following week, immediately before the scheduled Test there.

It took several days for ICC to decide that this match existed at all and should count in the records, though all precedent suggested this was the only correct decision and that events which have taken place cannot be expunged. It left Nixon McLean with a peculiar non-event of a debut (luckily, he was picked again and did not emulate J. C. W. MacBryan of England in 1924, who did not bat or bowl in his only Test). And it was rough on the three dismissed batsmen, especially Butcher, who had come in as a late replacement when Russell pulled out with diarrhoea. He had not batted since September, owing to England's poor pre-match planning. It was even rougher on spectators who had saved for years for what they thought would be the holiday of a lifetime rather than an all-time fiasco.

All the consequences took even longer to emerge, but ICC began taking steps to insist on a degree of consultation and supervision designed to make a repetition improbable, if not impossible. - MATTHEW ENGEL.