The test match began, rather unusually on a Wednesday. England made 377 in their first innings and stunned the West Indies by getting them all out in just 152 runs. The Windies were then made to follow on and made 256, however this left the English players with only 32 runs to get in their second innings. This was done without much ado and England won the test match by 10 wickets.

This was a result that English fans would ordinarily have enjoyed, except that the match had begun on Wednesday everything was all over by Friday evening. The thousands of spectators, who had bought tickets with a view to watching some good cricket at Lords over the weekend, were doomed to disappointment. The match was over before the weekend. Reportedly 20,000 people who had bought tickets for Saturday's play and they had no match to watch. Now the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) will be left with about 180,000 pounds (270,000 dollars) to refund, as reported in the cricket news.

One leading English daily has opined that "The Wednesday start, a necessity once the second Test was scheduled to begin next Thursday (three days minimum has to be penciled in between back-to-back matches) is looking like a bad piece of judgement."

The ECB, in their attempt to fit more tests into a short period of time (perhaps to rival the fast paced T20 matches favoured today), seem to have made a made an error here. Reportedly the atmosphere has been soulless, with “little of the buzz that makes Lord's the best cricket ground in the world”. One daily reported to “overwhelmingly empty seats at a quiet and windswept Lord's.” It is the ECB’s policy of having to fit in 7 test matches every summer that is causing them to crowd more and more international cricket into the yearly calendar that made for the unusual Wednesday start for the test match. Given that there is required to be a three day gap between two test matches, it was necessary to begin the first one on Wednesday if the second was to begin on Thursday.

Another fact that is reportedly aggravating the matter is the West Indian players are being paid “an unusually high fee" for the series. However the fact that the English team won the match has to be something to cheer about, for the players as well as the fans and spectators.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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