Dubai, we have a problem: Test cricket is predictable

● It was a thud of thoughtlessness heard around the world, even in ears fuzzed by the beery brouhaha that had, along with four-and-a-half hours of rain, soaked into Centurion’s notoriously welcoming grass banks.

Dale Steyn swooped on serrated steps towards a pitch of Amazonian green. At the other end of it Virender Sehwag was unprepared for what was about to happen.

Gautam Gambhir and Sehwag had survived an over of short, sharp shocks from each of Steyn and Morné Morkel.

But the first ball of the third over was fuller and too close to off-stump to cut.

Sehwag cut, signing his stroke with a gratuitous upward twirl of the bat that set the ball on a bumptious parabola through the thin, damp Highveld air and towards the third man boundary. Had he played the same shot in his native Delhi the ball would have bounced and scudded towards the fence.

But not in Centurion, where Hashim Amla took the catch.

MS Dhoni’s team lasted 38.4 overs and only his 90 and Sachin Tendulkar’s unbeaten 111 in the second dig earned them respectability. But they still lost by an innings.

That was in December 2010, and Virat Kohli’s team have been made to look similarly inept for two Tests in England, where the ball has swung and seamed even more than it tends to there.

None of this is news. Since 1936 India have played 34 Test series in England, Australia and SA — and won only three, all in England.

When teams like England, Australia and SA go to India the reverse doesn’t quite apply: they have played 33 series there and won 10.

Even so, each of those three teams have won only once in their 16 rubbers in India measured from SA’s series in February and March 2000, which remains the Saffers’ only success there.

Still, there is less room for complaints

The evidence that this is happening is growing and it’s up to the ICC to stop it becoming irrelevant

about conditions from teams visiting India compared to when the Indians play away. To the Indians’ credit they don’t often complain.

But that shouldn’t obscure the truth — Dubai, we have a problem.

Contrary to how it’s advertised, whiteball cricket is formulaic and predictable. Test cricket isn’t. Unless, that is, players who are required to spend more of their training time honing their white-ball skills lose the ability to adjust to what it takes to succeed in Tests played outside of their comfort zones.

The evidence that this is happening is growing and it’s up to the International Cricket Council (ICC) to stop the grandest form of the game becoming even less relevant than it has been in the T20 age.

That the toss should be scrapped is a no-brainer but that’s only part of the solution. Another is that visiting Test squads should be required to play at least two three-day warm-up fixtures against high quality opposition in conditions that are as close as possible to those they will face in the series.

India haven’t helped themselves in this regard by reducing the number of days they were to have spent playing tour matches in England. They did the same thing in SA last season.

Thought should be given to handing over pitch preparation to a crew of ICC groundsmen, who would follow the game around the world much like ICCappointed umpires do now.

Drop-in pitches prepared to specific instructions issued by the ICC? Worth discussing but expensive, and we don’t want Tests everywhere played on the kind of generic surfaces that have taken much of the character from white-ball cricket.

It’s a complex problem not eased by fans weaponising their support.

What happened to acknowledging that the other team have played well and, indeed, added to our entertainment?

Now that’s a silly idea.

Next we’ll have batsmen fresh off the plane trying to cut quicks for six in the third over of a Test on the Highveld.