Against foreboding odds, the West Indies defeated Pakistan on a spin-friendly track at the Multan Cricket Stadium to draw the series 1-1.

The first game in the two-match series, contested at the same venue, resulted in a 127-run defeat inside two days, and most onlookers expected the second Test to have a similar outcome. But the West Indies did better this time round and came out with a rather comfortable 120-run victory. As in the first game, the ball turned long distances from the very start, which both sides expected since they each employed only one specialist fast bowler apiece.

Trial by spin was a deliberate policy by the hosts. Having experienced spinners with better records and more accomplished batters than the visitors, Pakistan was stacking the deck strikingly in their favour. Fortunately for the West Indies, their plans backfired, and they were caught in their own trap.

Though the margin of their first Test win seems sizeable enough given that it was a low-scoring game, the sides weren’t that far apart. The difference was really a 141-run stand between Saud Shakeel and Mohammad Rizwan. A little more good fortune and the West Indies could have won that game as well.

But that is the concern with playing on those kinds of surfaces; the result could boil down to one thing — luck. The pitch that accommodates outlandish turns will often have the effect of turning the run-of-the-mill spinner into a magical slow-bowling maestro capable of scything through decent batting line-ups.

In October 2015, at the P Sara Stadium in Colombo, West Indies opener Kraigg Brathwaite demolished Sri Lanka’s second innings with 6/22 from 11.3 overs on a wicket that offered tremendous assistance. If we go much farther back, to cite just one other example, we can also recall Allan Border in Sydney in 1989 when he captured seven first innings wickets against a West Indies team that included Viv Richards, Desmond Haynes, Gordon Greenidge, Richie Richardson, Carl Hooper, and Jeffrey Dujon. In the other 137 Tests that he played, he only managed 28 additional wickets.

The wicket facilitating excessive turn often equalises the potential efficacy of each slow bowler, elevating even the occasional spinner to the level of world beater. This means that if the hosts prepare turning pitches thinking it gives them a winning hand, they could well be stunned in the end when they lose. A bowler need not have great powers of spin when bowling on the raging turner. He just needs to be steady and allow the surface to do the rest.

This is former Indian Captain Rahul Dravid dispensing a bit of cricket wisdom some years ago: “What you do when the wicket starts turning as much as they do, you take out the skill factor almost. It becomes a lottery, a lot about luck and chance… So from India’s point of view, if they back their skills on normal subcontinent wickets that start off with a little bit of slow spin and deteriorate as the game goes on, in a four-match series I’d back them to win. But if you make it a case of lottery and chance, then anything can happen.”

The surfaces were weighted much too heavily in favour of the slow bowlers, which resulted in less than five days cricket of the scheduled 10 days. This is unacceptable, and it is a good thing that the host’s mischievous pitch preparation did not hand them success in the second game. Home advantage can be significant in cricket, but what Pakistan did, inadvertently, was wipe out whatever benefit they might have had by turning the game, as Dravid suggested, into a lottery.

Pakistan, as stated previously, has more quality in their batting than the West Indies does. Yet they were unable to cope with the West Indies spinners, and especially with Jomel Warrican, who was Man-of-the-Series for the 19 wickets he collected. The conditions were so perilous that batting for a very long time was almost out of the question, and so the consensus of the visiting batters was to make good use of whatever time they were able to spend at the crease.

West Indies Captain Kraig Brathwaite made the fastest 50 of his career in the second innings. He said this after the game: “Both Test matches the pitch was tough to bat on, and we knew that. So, as I said, I just wanted us to be brave, to do whatever plans we have, to go there and execute them as good as possible, because regardless of what, there will be a ball with your name on it on this pitch.”

One recent study shows that India’s predilection for preparing what is offered, referred to as ‘raging turners’, for their home games has not served them all that well. Himanish Ganjoo, of ESPN Cricinfo, recently wrote an article with the following title, ‘The pitch boomerang: How India’s rank turners are biting them, not the opposition’. Ganjoo offers statistics that indicate that rather than ensuring domination over the opposition, the turning pitches have instead afforded visiting teams a greater chance of winning.

A better option, it would seem, would be to prepare more reasonable surfaces on which the home team’s superior quality in spin bowling and greater familiarity of home conditions would hand them a good chance of coming out on top. Matches would last longer, but given enough time they’d be more likely to come out on top

This is a lesson they need to learn. Their home advantage is already substantial, so there was no need for loading the dice even more. Pakistan gambled and lost in this last game. Serves them right.

Garfield Robinson is a Jamaican living in the US who writes on cricket for a few Indian and English publications. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or garfield.v.robinson@gmail.com.