By Jonathan Agnew BBC cricket correspondent

The Durham CCC chief executive, David Harker, admitted that cricket's administrators must take a step back and reassess the manner in which Test cricket is staged in this country.

A sparse crowd turned out to watch the first day of the second Test in Durham

A tiny crowd at the Riverside braved the chilly east wind to watch England painstakingly nail down their advantage in the series.

The pitch was utterly devoid of life, offering no incentive to bowlers or batsmen, other than those who - like the spectators - are blessed with great patience.

We said it at Lord's last week and will say it again now: this is not the way to promote Test cricket, and people are clearly voting with their feet.

Ravi Bopara isn't complaining. He became the fifth Englishman to score three consecutive hundreds, but surely the first to do so following three consecutive ducks.

I suspect that none of Herbert Sutcliffe, Denis Compton, Geoff Boycott or Graham Gooch was dropped after scoring the first of their three hundreds.

Bopara raced through the nineties, clubbing Sulieman Benn for four, six, four, and admirably adapted to the slow pitch.

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He offered a difficult leg-side catch to Denesh Ramdin on 63, and it is worth noting, because I am sure the Australians will have done, that he was almost caught at square leg earlier in his innings.

He was dropped there at Lord's, and needs to make sure that his head does not fall towards the offside as he clips the ball off his pads. It is certainly worth having a fielder there for him.

Those were his only blemishes - how well he has responded to the challenge of batting at number three.

At the other end, his Essex team-mate Alastair Cook notched his ninth Test hundred at the tender age of only 24.

It was a typically patient, carefully crafted innings and another reminder that Cook has the time and the talent to rewrite England's record books.

West Indies toiled away in the alien and, for them, unfriendly conditions.

Chris Gayle spent most of the day with his hands thrust deep into his pockets and didn't break into so much as a trot throughout, but no change there.

As he looked around at the empty stands, he would no doubt reflect that his observations that Test cricket is dying were not far off the mark.

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