This Test has become little more than a statistician's delight. Thanks to the state of the pitch and the state of the game, we cannot pay much attention to the runs scored today. Still, the batsmen had to get the runs and that does not happen automatically on any pitch, as Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara found out. But from the first day, the pitch has been the major influence in the way this match has gone. It's difficult to say exactly why West Indian pitches have become so slow in the past few years. There are still one or two exceptions, like Kingston, Jamaica. The pitch there for the fifth Test will be hard and it'll have a sheen on it. There'll be more pace and bounce there than on most Caribbean tracks, but the lack of grass will ensure turn and bounce for the spinners too.

I know that the West Indian cricket board has done some work on the pitches around the Caribbean, particularly after a Test match had to be abandoned against England four years ago because of a badly prepared pitch. But obviously much more work needs to be done to make sporting pitches. For many years, the pitches in Guyana and Antigua have been heavily biased in favour of the batsmen.

Good, sporting pitches make good cricket. And today was not a good advertisement for Test cricket. I saw the rare sight of spectators actually going to sleep in a West Indian cricket ground with West Indies batting. Considering the high amounts of money they are being charged for entry to a Test match, people are going to turn away if they don't get their money's worth. Even one-day matches become boring if the pitches are not sporting. Bad pitches produce bad cricket.

In the days of World Series Cricket we had portable pitches, but they were made up of two halves with a crack in the middle. With improvement in technology, we now have an entire pitch made and transported to the venue. That could be the way to go. But then again, financial constraints might make that an unviable option for Caribbean cricket.

We cannot afford to wait for the World Cup to be hosted here in 2007 to get things right in West Indian cricket. We are already losing out to other sports which are less expensive to play and take up less time. The raw talent is still there among youngsters. But we have to make sure that many more people play the game in the Caribbean so that the guys with talent have to excel to get into the Test team. The authorities have taken some positive steps, like getting more sponsors and encouraging youngsters to play in the middle during the lunch break of Test matches. But there is still a long way to go.

Let us start by making sporting pitches. International cricket boards have to get together and pool their knowledge and resources. Let us not have more dead Tests like this one, with 14 wickets falling in four days and some of us doing the rain dance to be spared the final day's play. Cricket played on such surfaces becomes pointless. Looking at the amount of work bowlers have to do in such pitches in a very crowded international calendar, I am glad I am retired.

Michael Holding, a key member of the West Indies pace quartet of the 1970s and '80s, will be contributing the Wisden Verdict for all the Tests in this series. He was talking to Raja M.

More West Indian Verdicts
Day 1 Kookaburra blues
Day 2Funny bouncers at 82mph
Day 3 Lucky Hooper

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