Supersport Park, scene for the fourth and final Test between the West Indies and South Africa starting this morning, has something of a reputation for producing the unusual since it became a Test venue nine years ago.
The inaugural 1995 Test at the delightfully unpretentious ground, with its spacious grass embankments, lasted just over a day before rain cut it short with the first innings of the match, by England, still in progress.
Five years later, the weather again was a spoilsport until South African captain Hansie Cronje persuaded opposing captain Mike Atherton to convert it into a one-innings contest by each forfeiting their second innings.
England won the contrived thriller by two wickets on the last day, but it later emerged that it was one of Cronje's clever match-fixing schemes that earned him a leather jacket and a handsome payout from a grateful bookie.
Two seasons ago, South Africa and India played out a match at Centurion that had its Test status withdrawn by the International Cricket Council (ICC) following India's refusal to accept match referee Mike Denness suspension of Virender Sewag and the censure of national icon Sachin Tendul-kar for ball tampering.
Now another bizarre theme has preceded Centurion's latest Test.
After much discussion, most of it no doubt involving the mother-in-law-to-be, South African fast bowler Andre Nel has delayed his long-arranged wedding by two hours, from 4.30 pm to 6.30 pm, on Saturday so that he can play.
If there is another unforeseen twist ahead, it would be a West Indies victory to transform another distressing overseas campaign into a satisfying outcome.
If nothing in the preceding three Tests has given the slightest indication that they possess the quality of bowling and fielding required to produce such a result, there is something about "dead rubber syndrome", as the Australians call it, and Centurion's record that enhances the prospect.
The unmatchable West Indies under Clive Lloyd often stumbled at the end when they had already secured series.
The present Australians, as strong as they are, have consistently been beaten in the last match with nothing in the rubber - including the West Indies' unparalleled achievement in reaching 418 to win the Antigua Test by three wickets last May.
The last time South Africa and the West Indies met, in the Caribbean in 2001, South Africa led 2-0 entering the fifth and final Test at Sabina - and were beaten.
The stark, more conventional evidence indicates that the West Indies' most realistic hope is to repeat the draw in the third Test in Cape Town.
The pitch is confidently expected to be of the same batsman-friendly types that have so far produced 15 individual three-figure innings - including three in successive matches by Jacques Kallis and two by Brian Lara.
South Africa have amassed successive first innings totals of 561, 658 for nine declared and 532 in the first three Tests and - as the West Indies have been unable to contain the scoring rate to under three and a half runs an over, wasted more than a dozen critical chances and given away cheap runs - have always been in control.
The West Indies reverted to their age-old formula last night, omitting left-arm wrist spinner Dave Mohammed for the Cape Town team and naming five of the six fast bowlers on tour from whom their final 11 would be chosen in the morning.
Merv Dillon, the most experienced, seemed to have come to the end of the line when he was omitted from the Cape Town match.
His reinstatement here and his selection during the week for the subsequent one-day internationals present a last chance for him to demonstrate his true worth in an attack that cries out for leadership.
Five West Indians have scored hundreds and all [Lara, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Chris Gayle and Dwayne Smith] were deemed fit enough to play.
They have ensured two totals of over 400 and raised 354 for five to comfortably hold off their seventh straight Test loss in Cape Town. But they can only win by bowling South Africa out twice and they have not yet come close to achieving that. However, in their preceding match against the provincial team, Easterns, last weekend, they secured a result that brought them their first first-class victory in 16 matches in South Africa. But Easterns' batting was hardly South Africa's - and even then they recovered from 81 for six to total 313 in the first innings.
But it was a rare triumph for the West Indies, the kind that should lift a team that has been numbed in recent times by the monotony of defeat.
"That win was important because it gave us a little bit of momentum going into the Test," Lara said, adding that the most important element was that his side "should keep improving".
"I would like to see a whole-hearted effort so we can all come off the field proud of our performance," he added. "We know this is our last opportunity to salvage something from the series, and I am determined not to let South Africa win this one."
South African captain Graeme Smith sought to dispel the supposition that his team would be any less eager for success because the series has been decided.
"Any notion that we won't be pushing as hard for victory in the fourth Test as we did in the first can be instantly dismissed," he wrote in his newspaper column. "We have closed the gap on Australia at the top of the Test championship in recent weeks, and every single Test victory counts, not just series wins."
Teams:
SOUTH AFRICA (probable): Graeme Smith (captain), Herschelle Gibbs, Jacques Rudolph, Jacques Kallis, Gary Kirsten, Neil McKenzie, Mark Boucher, Shaun Pollock, Andrew Hall, Makhaya Ntini, Andre Nel.
WEST INDIES (from): Brian Lara (captain), Chris Gayle, Daren Ganga, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Dwayne Smith, Ridley Jacobs, Vasbert Drakes, Mervyn Dillon, Adam Sanford, Corey Collymore, Fidel Edwards.
UMPIRES: Srinivas Venkataraghavan (India), Darrell Harper (Australia).; Reserve: Brian Jerling (South Africa). TV Replays: Ian Howell (South Africa). Ends.