A cracked pitch looks frightening and mostly is not

Wide cracks photograph well and rarely decide a match, while the rough that actually wins one is barely mentioned.

Ask a batter what he is afraid of on the fifth morning and he will not say the crack. He will point at a patch of scuffed, broken turf about a foot outside his off stump, made by a bowler landing in the same place four hundred times, and he will tell you that is where the game is.

The difference is repeatability. A crack is a single line in the surface, and hitting it requires an accuracy no bowler possesses on demand, over after over. Even when a ball does land on one, the behaviour is unpredictable rather than reliably hostile. It might shoot low, it might do nothing at all, and a batter facing it is in a lottery rather than a trap. That is unpleasant but it is not a plan.

Footmarks are different because they are a target with area. A left-arm spinner bowling to a right-hander can aim at a patch a yard long and get purchase on almost every delivery, which converts a probabilistic hazard into a systematic one. Turn is not even the main weapon. The variable bounce out of loose soil is what produces the edge to slip and the ball that gloves to short leg.

Clay content is where the two effects come from and it is why the same preparation can produce both. A high-clay soil binds hard, holds together under a roller and gives you pace and carry early, then contracts as the moisture leaves and opens up in cracks. It also breaks up badly under studs once dry. So a groundsman choosing his soil is not choosing between a batting pitch and a bowling pitch. He is choosing when the pitch changes character, and by how much.

My argument is that we read the wrong signal because the wrong signal is visible. Cracks appear on camera. Rough does not, at least not until someone brings a long lens to it in the final session. The commentary that talks about a pitch falling apart on day three is almost always talking about lines in the surface, when the thing that will get seven wickets is a patch of dust nobody has photographed.

If you want to know how a Test finishes, find out which end the left-armer has been bowling from since Thursday.