Bare pace-bowling stocks adding to West Indies' woes

Steven Smith's proposed deal to Jason Holder to enliven the last day of the water-logged Test in Sydney was strictly fantasy. The West Indies captain's rejoinder was based on reasonable reality.

Smith's plan was for West Indies to declare at their second-day score of 248 for 7. He would then forego an Australian second innings, "bowl lob ups for seven or eight overs or whatever it was" and offer an equation of 370 off 70 overs to win, at a required rate of 5.28.

It was a flawed idea for a couple of reasons. Ian Chappell, the former Australia captain, cited the suspicion such a contrivance would create at a time when the game is resolute in its crusade against match-fixing.

Above all, it would have transformed even such a disrupted match into a laughable fiasco, a glorified equivalent of a Caribbean Sunday fete match, denigrating the image of Test cricket rather than enhancing it, as Smith believed it would.