Why Cape Town was a wake up call.

Do you remember the day when the Aussies completely forgot how to make contact between a piece of willow and a spherical leather object for about an hour of incredible chaos and amusement? I do. I remember it like it was the day before yesterday.

Not since the first half of the theatrical version of The Return of the King (my taste in movies is not up for discussion), have there been more instances of men padded in armor being butchered mercilessly than what was on show in Cape Town. And it was fun. And considering that it was fun, a strict no-no on the ICC’s strict policy of ensuring 5 day test matches in which batsmen pile up runs as high as Wilt Chamberlain, it brought interest back to the game.

The ICC will no doubt react to this outrageous source of entertainment by condemning the pitch and by slaying a kitten for every man awake on the first three days of a test match. The overall attitude of the ICC in trying to standardize pitches in order to get longer test matches has resulted in yawn fests, especially in the sub-continent. But let us not get into a discussion about cricket administration, for we are cricket fans and that makes our views on anything of absolutely no import to the big wigs at the ICC or the BCCI.

What we will concentrate on is our shared love of the sight of batsmen in distress, who, unlike most damsels in the same situation, we probably would not want to save them and live happily ever after. The image of Ricky Ponting in a lace dress, needing a kiss to be resuscitated back to life is... well... awkward and difficult to explain to your wife as to why exactly you had such a vision.

So, I have come up with a list of things that cricket administrators can do to ensure that the spectators are brought back to the stadiums to watch massacres first hand:

1. Convert all pitches into a minesweeper grid to ensure that batsmen can no longer indiscriminately charge at bowlers.
2. Test sides should be allowed to bring back four bowlers from the past using state of the art necromancy. Imagine Johnny Briggs finally being able to bowl against the greatest batsman of our times, Chris Martin.
3. All future contracts for building pitches should be given to those building rural roads in India.
4. All sight screens facing the batsmen should have a picture of Curtly Ambrose staring back at them.
5. Bowling captains should be given an option to choose to bowl with either a cricket ball or a grenade after every 80 overs in a test match.