Former South African speedster Dale Steyn took to A test match that lasts less than 4 or 5 days is not a test match.
Dale Steyn is not the only one who has come out to voice his opinion on the matter and joins the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Aakash Chopra, Ravi Shastri and Vernon Philander in this debacle. Most of them were of the opinion that the second Test should not have ended so early, but they all gave varying opinions on the pitch.
Gavaskar and Chopra were of the opinion that Test matches should not be played on tracks like this (Newlands) and also criticized SENA’s national media for complaining that Indian pitches were too spin-friendly. Ravi Shastri’s comments revolved around how quickly India’s second innings ended using a very strange metaphor.
Vernon Philander opined that batsmen should look to improve their respective techniques on difficult surfaces, but his former teammate Dale Steyn offered a completely different opinion. Steyn was not at all impressed with the length of the match and was expecting 5 full days of action after the first test also ended on day 3.
“Let’s let the cracks appear and let the tone deteriorate,” Dale Steyn says of a fan’s tweet
Dale Steyn, who clipped 439 Test wickets for South Africa, while responding to a tweet about the Newlands wicketkeeper deliberately leaving a layer of grass on the pitch to prevent cracks from opening, asked why people are so afraid of the cracks.
Why are we so afraid of crack? Think Sydney, Perth. Cracks so wide you can park a car inside them and yet they always make it to days 4 and 5! It is useless for a test to end so quickly that not even a crack is visible. The pitches deteriorate as the days go by, let it happen. The two-day tests are…
– Dale Steyn (@DaleSteyn62) January 4, 2024
He used the examples of fields in Sydney and Perth and amusingly claimed that the cracks there are so wide that you can even park vehicles inside them. He stated that players or curators should not be wary of cracks and stated that Test matches should not be so short-lived.
“Why are we so afraid of crack? Think Sydney, Perth. Cracks so wide you can park a car inside them and yet they always make it to days 4 and 5! It is useless for a test to end so quickly that not even a crack is visible. The pitches deteriorate as the days go by, let it happen. “Two-day tests are not test matches.” – wrote Dale Steyn.
Meanwhile, the second Test between India and South Africa will now be known as the shortest Test match ever played in the history of the format and surpassed the previous shortest Test between South Africa and Australia in 1932. The 23 wickets that fell on Day 1 is also the second highest number of wickets to fall in a single day after a 1904 Test between England and Australia in which 25 wickets fell in 3 sessions.