For cricket fans, Trinidad is a familiar cricket destination that houses one of the legendary cricket venues — Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain. But the stadium surprisingly was overlooked and did not get to host a single ICC men’s T20 World Cup match, and instead the first semifinal between South Africa and Afghanistan was played at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy stadium, a new venue, practically untested venue that started hosting men’s international cricket less than two years ago.

During this World Cup, the track at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy has produced scores of 40 all out, 78 all out and 95 all out. There has been only one decent contest with the West Indies managing to defend a score of 149 despite at one stage being 30 for 5.

On Thursday, the surface was used to host the first semifinal between Afghanistan and South Africa, and the first couple of deliveries, literally summed up the whole fixture, when the first ball rolled along the ground and the second reared off a similar length, earning sharp criticism from cricket pundits.

While Afghanistan coach Jonathan Trott did not want to make it a “case of sour grapes”, the former England batter categorically said that such a pitch wasn’t expected for a crucial World Cup knockout.

“I don’t want to get myself into trouble and I don’t want to come across as bitter or it being a case of sour grapes. But that’s not the pitch that you want to have a match, a semi-final of a World Cup, on plain and simple. It should be a fair contest. I’m not saying it should be flat completely with no spin and no seam movement, but I’m saying you shouldn’t have batsmen worrying about going forward and the ball flying over their head. You should be confident in your foot movement and being able to hit through the line or use your skills,” Trott said.

“T20 is about attacking and about scoring runs and taking wickets, not looking to survive. If the opposition bowled well and got to a position where they bowled very, very well and it’s through skill, then that’s fine and then it’s about adapting to that. But once the ball starts misbehaving and rolling… if we had bowled as straight as South Africa had, I think you would have seen a very interesting second half as well. South Africa bowled well, used the conditions, and showed our boys what it’s capable of. But it just didn’t go our way tonight,” he added.

Proteas skipper Aiden Markram appeared to be on the same page as Trott, and expressed his happiness that his team won’t have to play again on that “challenging” wicket, similar to the ones the South Africans have played right through the tournament.

“Yeah, I mean T20 cricket as a whole, you want entertainment. The wickets that we’ve had throughout the competition have been pretty challenging. Tonight’s wicket was pretty challenging once again. It’s hard to say that a wicket is not good because it can’t just always be a batter’s game, but I think if we reflect back on this wicket, we’ll probably be pretty happy that we’re not playing here again,” Markram said.