MS Dhoni collects the Healthy Hearts Association’s Man of the Year award for prudently having shielded millions of spectators and 22 players from the damage a tense last session could potentially have inflicted © AFP

Dominica’s first-ever Test match was an old-style twister, a game that wound and ground an undulating course towards a tense climax. With 15 overs remaining – more than 4% of a rain-interrupted match ‒ India were well set to press on for victory, to confirm their pre-eminence in the world game by ruthlessly completing a 2-0 series triumph, 86 runs required from 90 balls. Two greats of the game at the crease. Two World-Cup-winning batsmen still to come, plus a useful tail, but they would have to make those runs on a slow-scoring pitch against a defiant West Indies striving to suggest their latest improvements might have more longevity than other recent false dawns. All was in readiness for a rousing conclusion to an intriguing series, which had had a touch of the 1950s about it in terms of scoring rates, but which tested the batsmen throughout, and saw the welcome return to form of Ishant Sharma and Fidel Edwards. A titanic hour’s cricket was imminent.

And then everyone just wandered off.

As anti-climaxes go, this was not quite as disappointing as it would have been had Hillary and Tensing reached 50 metres from the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, then simultaneously pulled hamstrings and decided not to risk aggravating their injuries by going any further, potentially ruling themselves out of mountaineering for between four and six months; nor as much of a let-down as when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin opened the door of their magic space rocket in 1969, took one look at the moon, and scuttled back inside muttering something about being scared of rocks. (Fortunately they were persuaded by Houston ground control to “have another go, or find your own way home”.)

However, it was a dismal end to a cricket match, a wasteful, negative, dispiriting cop-out, using a needless and bone-headed loophole in the sport’s regulations to chicken out of a potentially thrilling endgame. India were content not to run a miniscule risk of defeat in exchange for a highly possible victory. West Indies were content to have their brave batting rearguard of Chanderpaul and the Edwardses rewarded with a drawn match and a series defeat by an acceptable margin of just one Test to nil. Cricket was unquestionably the loser. And cricket should be asked some stroppy questions in its post-match press conference.

This was the second time in little over a month that one of the world’s leading Test teams has bottled out of pushing for victory with a sizeable chunk of cricket remaining. England pulled the plug on June’s Lord’s Test against Sri Lanka when needing six wickets (or seven if the injured Dilshan batted again) in 15 overs, having, in the previous two innings in the series, taken their opponents’ last six wickets in 7.2 and 22.5 overs respectively. Why? There is a time and a place for rest and recuperation in modern international cricket, and it is not during the last hour of a Test match.

India bailed out yesterday with less than a run a ball needed, with seven wickets left. Still to bat were MS Dhoni – that’s MS Dhoni, the man who had grasped the World Cup final as if it were an errant puppy and made it bark his name in Morse code ‒ plus established ODI star Virat Kohli, plus dangerous lower-order smiter Harbhajan, plus first-class-batting-average-of-24 Praveen Kumar, plus batted-for-three-hours-in-two-innings-against-Australia-in-the-Mohali-Test-last-year-and-dismissed-on-average-once-every-44-balls-in-Tests Ishant Sharma. I know Munaf Patel is unlikely ever to win a Nobel Prize For Batting, but did he need that much protection? On a pitch on which Fidel Edwards had just survived for two and a half hours? Defeat was not impossible, but it would have taken major and prolonged ineptitude.

There is no satisfactory answer to the question of why England and India both bailed out from potentially winning positions - oddly tremulous decisions by teams striving to be the world’s best. But perhaps the more pertinent question is: why were they even allowed to? I assume that they did not have to catch the last boat home, which provided England an excuse in the timeless Durban Test of 1938-39, when they aborted their pursuit of 696 to win tantalisingly short at 654 for 5 (after 291 overs’ worth of batting – if ever there was an accelerator pedal that could have been pressed a little more firmly, a little sooner, it was that one).

Why does Test cricket permit its captains – seldom the most adventurous of beasts ‒ to leave their public like so many Tony Hancocks furiously realising the last page of their novel has been ripped out? Did Shakespeare get to the end of Act IV of his smash-hit platinum-selling turn-of-the-17th-century rom-trag Hamlet, think to himself, “I deserve some quality me-time,” and scribble: “Act V: And they all lived happily ever after”? No, he did not. He knuckled down and he finished the drama. And that is why his plays are still wowing the crowds 400 years later. Test cricket will be a footnote within 20 years if it keeps cheating its supporters like this.

Does any other sport allow this kind of artificial shortening of play? This was not like the concession of an 18-inch putt to share a matchplay golf contest. It was like two players standing on the 18th tee, with the match all square, and the golfing world watching with bated breath, and saying to each other: “I can’t be arsed with this. Call it a draw? Deal. Let’s go and sing some karaoke instead. I do an amazing “Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong.” Imagine the reaction if Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, in the Fight Of The Century at Madison Square Garden in 1971, had staggered out at the bell for the final round, exhausted after 14 rounds of brutal pugilism, had a cuddle in the middle of the ring, said, “Come here, buddy, violence doesn’t solve anything, let’s be friends,” and started dancing a slow waltz.

The regulation allowing captains to agree to end a game early presumably exists in order to allow an aimlessly meandering match to be humanely put out of its misery when a positive result is an impossibility. This was not the case at Lord’s, and it was even less the case in Dominica. Spectators were cheated, the game was cheated. It must not be allowed to happen in future.

Players should not be allowed to make these decisions. They have shown they cannot be trusted with this responsibility. The result of a Test match should not be decided by negotiation. Players can no longer decide when a game is suspended due to slightly bad light (as it should be officially renamed), and they should not be permitted to decide to terminate a game when a positive result is still a live possibility. Not only is it potentially open to abuse by the unscrupulous, it is a nonsensical insult to Test cricket’s supporters. Let the umpires decide when a game has become pointless. The evidence suggests that many Test captains would happily shake hands on a draw after three overs on the first morning, just to be on the safe side.

At a time when the five-day format is widely acknowledged to be fighting for its future under sustained assault from various angles, Test cricket has punched itself in the face. Again.

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Lily-livered MP Debbie Abrahams decided she’d rather kiss babies than front up to Malinga at The Oval © Getty Images

MS Dhoni has had little to complain about of late. If he had eaten a fried breakfast every time he had received a trophy, an accolade or a blast of public adulation this year, he would now be the size of 18 Inzamams. However, he received a minor setback in the current Barbados Test, when a blooper in the TV umpiring box led to him being dismissed on the rogue evidence of the wrong ball.

As an Englishman, I cannot help but regret that this new strain of dismissal was not available to umpires during my nation’s dark days of Ashes humiliation in the 1990s and early 2000s. “That’s out, Hayden. Technically, you smashed that wide long hop for four, but I’m going to judge you on the evidence of the ball Warne bowled to Hussain yesterday afternoon. Out. Plumb in front. Hitting the middle of middle. On your way, sunshine. 0 for 1.”

The prancing stride of technological progress is supposed to be ridding the cricketing world of the vicissitudes of umpiring error, yet it frequently adds an entertaining element of random injustice to proceedings. Players are given out or not-out when technology suggests they were in fact respectively not-out and out, on the grounds that they were only marginally not-out and out, and therefore should remain out and not out. Players are given not-out despite technology suggesting they were definitely out, because someone in a suit somewhere doesn’t like one of the bits of technology used. Players are given out when they were clearly not-out, because one of their team-mates had earlier pretended he was not-out even though he must have known he was out. Catches are denied because the tip of an unusually curious blade of grass could theoretically have been protruding through a fielder’s fingers. And now Dhoni has been despatched back to the pavilion because someone put the wrong roll of cine film into the projector in the TV umpire’s private cinema (I admit I am not entire up to speed with what technology the ICC is using these days).

The spirit of randomness at large in the adjudication of cricket could and arguably should be extended further. The Confectionery Stall fervently believes that there should be scope within the game of cricket for a fielding team, once an innings, to decide summarily that an opposition batsman is out. This would add another fascinating level of tactical intrigue to the great game – do you save the AutomaticOut^TM to dismiss the opposition’s best player as soon as he walks to the wicket, or do you wait to see whether or not he is in form, in case you need to get rid of a lesser player who is proving more dangerous on the day? In a tight game, do you hold on to your AutomaticOut^TM as long as possible, saving it for when one or two wickets are left and just a few runs are needed to win, or do you play it early in an effort to turn the momentum of the match at a critical juncture? Does a captain merely use it to settle his own personal vendettas against opposition players – in a game meandering towards a draw, a fielding captain could wait until his nemesis is on 99 before calling the AutomaticOut^TM and depriving his loathed opponent of personal glory, whilst running around punching the air and shouting, “Got him, got him, yes, he’s gone.”

Throughout cricket history, some umpires appear to have unilaterally applied their own version of the AutomaticOut^TM, triggering innocent and baffled batsmen with a proud waggle of the finger and an internal giggle. For the sakes of consistency and fairness, the system must be formalised, and the AutomaticOut^TM is clearly the best way to do this.

Of course, the AutomaticOut^TM, whilst providing huge interest for spectators, players and pundits alike, would further undermine the authority of the umpire. Amidst the squibbling squabbling over the DRS, with both sides claiming to have emerged victorious and having clung on to their precious principle that some decisions should remain wrong, no matter what system is used.

Ultimately it seems inevitable that umpires as we know and intermittently love them are an endangered species. In time, they will be replaced either by omniscient robots or by grim-faced, shaven-headed, bicep-twitching, tattoo-headed nightclub bouncers employed to stop players scuffling through a mixture of intimidation and growling. Or, in an ideal world, by omniscient robot nightclub bouncers armed with flamethrowers and an overriding sense of justice.

Aside from the Dhoni controversy, the second Test has been another intriguing low-scoring game on another pitch whose jaunty behaviour might have been annoying if it was a noisy teenager on a crowded train carriage rather than a cricket pitch, but which makes for good and interesting cricket. Such surfaces may be an unintended and happy by-product of the pitifully low crowds that attend Test matches in most parts of the cricketing universe these days. Ground authorities no longer need to worry about losing gate money on non-existent days four and five if no one is coming through that gate on days one to three.

In fact, the evidence of this game suggests that, for the good of Test cricket, administrators should do absolutely everything in their considerable powers to dissuade spectators from attending Test cricket. Thus freed from the constraints of financial necessity, the groundsmen would be free to prepare pitches that produce the kind of Test cricket that spectators would happily pay to watch.

Meanwhile Alistair Cook’s England established themselves as odds-on favourites to win the 2015 and 2019 ICC World Cups by thrashing Sri Lanka in the Sanath Jayasuriya Testimonial match on Tuesday. If they can replicate the form they showed at the rain-splattered Oval – decisive and positive batting, followed by incisive bowling and sharp fielding, all leading to a thumping victory ‒ in every match of the tournament in Australia in just 45 months’ time, they will fly home with a sparkly new trophy.

New captain Cook set a blazing tempo, clattering away at a super-Sehwagian 160 runs per 100 balls at the start of the innings. Admittedly he blazed and clattered for only three balls, but he evidently inspired his troops. If he can maintain that scoring rate for the rest of his captaincy career, and, ideally, rectify the getting-out-third-ball problem that has bedevilled him throughout his current one-match tenure as ODI skipper, he will silence any press-box sceptics.

It might be a little presumptuous to draw too many conclusions from any one game – as England’s World Cup campaign proved on a match-by-match basis ‒ but it was a good beginning, particularly given that, in the Colombo quarter-final at the end of March, England had been unceremoniously heffalumped by Sri Lanka, after curiously deciding not to risk disturbing any rare birds that might have been nesting in the proximity of the boundary rope. They were aided by the fact that, unlike in the World Cup, key bowler Jimmy Anderson is no longer running in to bowl as if he has just finished a 36-hour-shift as a junior doctor in a busy hospital’s accident and emergency department.

Sri Lanka were perhaps encumbered by the fact that, whilst they showed their support for the ICC’s democratisation drive by selecting a member of parliament to open their batting, England, by unsporting contrast, did not send Cook in alongside Debbie Abrahams, the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth.

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