A sleeping giant stirs

The West Indies were beaten by England in the first Test at Lords. The margin of defeat was not a large one but the better side won in the end. That is the point – the better side won. So often when playing the West Indies the opposition hasn’t really had to try very hard. Over the past decade the West Indies have shown a general lack of commitment bordering on the amateur at times. They have been, no doubt, an embarrassment to their supporters. A push over. Not so at Lords, or from what I understand in the recent home series against Australia. The West Indies have fought. They have tried and it shows. They might not be winning games but they are starting to win hearts and that is the first step. Whatever Darren Sammy is saying to them is working. Long may it continue.

Pakistan's long wait continues

Pakistan has never won a test match in the West Indies and now they have to win in St Kitts to level the series. West Indies were just about in front for most of the first test, their disciplined bowling and obdurate tail end batting winning them the game. This was the West Indies first win since their remarkable win against England two years ago .

The wicket in Guyana was pretty poor for a test match – variable bounce and plenty of spin on day one – but I don’t think that is a bad thing. There are lots of test matches played on flat wickets where the bat always dominates the ball. It is a refreshing change to see the converse. I am not advocating a policy of producing poor test wickets but I think a bit of variability is a good thing.

World Cup: one week left

Overall the cricket at the current World Cup has been very good. We have not had too many poor matches. Of the four quarter finals:

West Indies were thrashed by Pakistan and rightly so. Pakistan, like West Indies are a team that can beat anybody one day and lose to anyone the next. Pakistan at least have more ‘good’ days and could easily will the competition.

India beat Australia in a close game that in the end India deserved to win. India have, to quote the Heath government, been walking around the battlefield looking for someone to surrender to. In this match they got their act together. I was really impressed with Australia even though they lost. Not for one minute did they stop trying to win. There is no shame in being beaten by a better side, especially if in doing so you give everything. Australia, and Brett Lee in particular, embodied that. It was good to see such dominant champions going out on their shield.

South Africa has a side that should have won the 2011 world cup. They can beat anyone. Unfortunately that extends to themselves and the serial underachievers did just that. Credit must go to New Zealand who was clever enough to see it coming and exploit it. A World Cup just wouldn’t be a World Cup without a South African choke.

Sri Lanka looks like a side that might be peaking at the right time. Their bowling was superb to restrict England to 229. The Harath, Murali, Mendis, Malinga quartet are superb with the ball; Dilshan and Tharanga similarly so with bat. England looked a tired side at the end of a long set of tours. However, the reality is that they were beaten by a better side.

Roll on the semi-finals. Who will win? Toss a coin.

Australia in denial?

So the mighty Australia cricket team has finally got what was coming to it – a good kicking – made all the more painful because it was administered by England. I say ‘England’ but the 3-1 dismantling of Australian batting, bowling and fielding was just the latest instalment. Australia lost 2-0 to India in October and so has lost five out of their last eight test matches.

It is uncanny how the Australian slide from all conquering bully to has-been is mirroring the decline of the West Indies in the late 80s and early 90s. A once invincible team, the West Indies dominated for 15 years before it slowly lost its great players – leaving two or three to try and carry the side. They inevitably could not halt the decline and as they retired the side went into free-fall. Australia now has Ricky Ponting, Michael Hussey and Michael Clarke left from their great side. They seem compelled to get rid of their captain, the greatest Australian batsman of any recent generation; with Hussey surely following soon. That doesn’t leave much and there are no new players of test standard coming through. Strewth. They are stuffed.

The reasons for the West Indies and Australian decline are obvious: they lost great players and did not replace them. The West Indies went through much soul searching. The influence of Baseball, Athletics, NFL and better jobs were all used as excuses. No doubt in Australia there will be similar scape-goats. However, I would like to suggest a different reason: coincidence. In any walk of life great players, musicians, engineers, etc. often appear in clusters. For the West Indies in the mid-1970s and in Australia in the 1990s there were clusters of remarkable cricketers. Players who would define cricket for a decade or more. Maybe their appearance was just coincidence – channelled by cricket into remarkable sides. If that is so then coincidence can also produce a dearth of talent. Periods of time when there are no great cricketers. Maybe Australia are in such a lull in which case all they can do is wait for the cycle to come around again. They say Cricket Australia is in denial about their slump – I doubt it; there is just nothing they can do. Although getting rid of their most experienced and talented players would seem like a mistake by any measure…

India falter at first real hurdle

West Indies are a funny side. They can almost lose at will to England, employing a dizzying barrage of dropped catches, poor bowling and batting collapses. They started the competition by destroying Australia and have done something similar today to India. West Indies outplayed India in most departments and had Yuvraj not hit an impressive 67 (from 43 balls) it would have been a demolition. Dwayne Bravo was simple outstanding: 4 wickets and 66* (from 36 balls). He, Simmons and latterly Chanderpaul made the Indian bowling look predictable and unthreatening. West Indies face South Africa tomorrow. Can they win? Of course they can if the same side as today turns up.

India has to pick themselves up and prepare for England on Sunday. England are a bit like the West Indies form wise; they can be good or terrible (more usually terrible of late). The loser of England v India will almost certainly not progress to the semi finals. The winner will have to win their last game. For India that means beat England and then beat South Africa. They will have to play better than they did today to win either of those games.

Australia sunk in a perfect storm

We don’t have many of these days in England. Where the weather is moody, hot and sticky. The clouds bunch up. For hours it looks like the storm will break. Eventually, all hell breaks loose – hail, thunder, lightning and flood. So it has been this year with Chris Gayle. He has spent the previous month looking stormy and moody. Hardly a smile and not many runs. Sulking at his position and the weather – not that I can blame him there. The storm finally broke yesterday with Gayle and Fletcher assaulting the Australian bowling. Australia were not so much beaten and blown away in ten overs. Chasing 170, West Indies were 120-0 after ten! Brett Lee on his return to the Australian side bowled very quickly, topping 93mph. He disappeared even more quickly with Gayle hitting him clean out of the ground and taking 27 from one over. Andre Fletcher’s contribution to the thumping should not be forgotten. He started the assault and after they had broken the back of the chase he batted sensibly – milking the bowling. A real revelation.

Gayle’s innings was not all savagery and violence. He played proper cricket shots full of style. Earlier in the day we saw McCullum and Taylor blast it for New Zealand but their innings were just slog-fests. They had none of Gayle’s class. Will we see a better innings this tournament? I hope so.

Three days at Lords

So what did we learn from England’s easy victory over the West Indies? Nothing much I suspect. It is difficult to draw conclusions from one match. Great performances can soon lose their lustre after a few poor ones and similarly a poor performance is forgotten when superseded by a match winning one.

For England the big winners were Bopara, Swann and Onions. All three are relative or actual newcomers and all played big parts in England’s win. Swann was particularly impressive knocking his first fifty and dismissing Chanderpaul twice. As for Onions, I wonder if a debutant has ever taken his first three test wickets in one over! Remarkable. He reminded me a little of Peter Siddle and that is no bad thing. England need a workhorse who can keep running in.

I thought Bresnan was poorly treated. He was only given seven overs in the match on debut – what chance has he got to shine there. I wondered if Strauss has a lack of faith in him.

The West Indies were just plain poor. Fidel Edwards bowled with fire and no luck and was by far the standout player. The indiscipline of old returned with a bang. Let us hope they pull it together by the time the next Test starts.

A bit early in the season for lethargy

The West Indies are playing one day cricket at Lords. To be more specific they are playing two session cricket and those two sessions happened yesterday. After tea yesterday the real West Indies side turned up and took over from the over-achievers that have been masquerading as the Windies all year. Only the noble Fidel was not replaced. What a shower they are. Cannot field or catch. Cannot bat either it seems. This is not that surprising, it is the West Indies after all and it is also early May in England, a time-of-the-year dedicated to making visiting sides feel home-sick. A time when Englishmen say things like “isn’t it supposed to be warm in May?” However that is irrelevant because of all the things in the West Indies side power, trying is one of them! They are not trying even a little. They look like they do not want to be there; at all. Wake up Windies, you are at Lords in a test match and if things don’t improve you will be beaten by lunch on the third day.

Maroon with Yellow?

West Indies coach John Dyson showed what he was made of yesterday and the insight was not pretty. For the last 50 runs of the West Indies innings the batsmen were complaining about the light. Pollard could hardly face a ball without a squint or a remark. When the end came the match was boiling to a close finish – 27 wanted from 22 balls with 3 wickets remaining – and the crowd was loving it. So, at the first chance Dyson called the chase off at the first chance. No thought for the audience. Cowardice. The TV shot of Dyson calling in the batsmen was interesting because it showed Gayle motionless and looking less than impressed. He wasn’t jumping up to claim a suspect victory, Dyson was. Happily Dyson compounded his cowardice with stupidity by misreading the Duckworth/Lewis sheet.

A West Indies v England Combined XI

If I had to pick 11 from the 22 that played in Trinidad:

Gayle
Strauss
Sarwan
Pietersen
Chanderpaul
Ramdin
Edwards
Swann
Broad
Anderson
Panesar

Of course in reality Flintoff would play for a spinner (Panesar at present). Taylor for Anderson or Broad...maybe - not that Taylor's Test century sways it.

I think its pretty damning that half the England side couldn't get in the (current) West Indies XI...

Rollercoaster Week

It has been a funny week and a bit. It started with high-farce in Antigua and the West Indies administrators surpassing even their dizzying heights of incompetence. The ground was, literally, built on sand. Like the ground at North Sound (I am refusing to call it after Viv Richards until it is worthy of such a great cricketer), our garden has a bit of a drainage problem. We had it levelled and returfed a couple of years ago. The gardener used ‘a bit’ of sand and it seems okay now. He did not use 100% sand because that would have been stupid. I wonder if the Chuckle Brothers are on the WICB...

With one ground consigned to the sand pit it fell to the Antigua Recreation Ground (ARG) to stage a Test match with 36-hours notice. How could you expect them to do a good job given no notice? That didn’t stop them though and they produced a good cricket wicket. Moving the Test match to where the people ‘are’ also meant they could come and watch – a revolutionary idea. We saw a fantastic Test match in which England were denied by some excellent West Indies batting. England threw everything, including an injured Flintoff, at West Indies but they held on with nine wickets gone. Thrilling. Should Strauss have declared earlier? Probably, but then if we played using hindsight Chris Gayle would have batted first... Roll on Barbados.

Underlying all these events has been the on-going drama and revelations regarding Allen Stanford. I am no financial guru so I cannot really comment on what he did or didn’t do. What seems clear is that he is in a heap of trouble and the ECB are looking pretty silly. We can expect a lot more on this and this is interesting reading: http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/story/391500.html

It's Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka West Indies

The West Indies have stepped forward to be second prize next summer. Sri Lanka were due to fill in for Zimbabwe but then everyone realised the much more important IPL was happening and Sri Lanka wouldn’t actually have any test players, so now they are not coming. Of course, some West Indians (i.e. the good ones) also have IPL contracts, so who will they be sending? The first test is at Lord’s on May 6th, which by my reckoning is still technically winter, so the West Indies will feel right at home...

West Indies win a draw

It is a sign of Australia’s dominance that it is noteworthy that they did not win the 2nd Test against West Indies today. West Indies have battled hard in this series, much harder than recent history would suggest they were capable of. Their bowling attack has shown discipline and some venom whilst the batting has at times been solid. Having to bat out today to force a draw, Sarwan and Chanderpaul batted with great assurance and in the end made the task look easier than it was. For Australia, Brett Lee was again very impressive, showing commitment with the ball and in the field.

Stuart MacGill bowled some pretty awful leg-spin earlier in the match. He sent down quite a few long-hops and full-tosses and his own frustration probably led to his snap mid-test decision to retire from International cricket at the end of the game. He is a much better bowler than this series has shown – he has 200 Test wickets and had it not been for Shane Warne keeping him out of the side he would surely have a lot more. So Australia is now spinnerless and their ‘reserve’, Brad Hogg, has also retired. All of a sudden the Australian spin-cupboard looks bare. There is talk of new spinners but at the moment it is just that – talk. Ricky Ponting must be concerned that he may now lack the firepower at his command to dismiss sides on flat wickets, something that Warne could do with regularity.

This series has something which I think is remarkable: Xaviar Marshall. Not that the West Indies opening batsman has done anything remarkable in the series. The remarkable thing is that he is opening the batting for the West Indies and his highest first-class score is 82. Yes, you read that right, Xavier Marshall has not scored a first-class century. His first class average is an understated 25.25. It seems bizarre that a side that has just managed to draw with Australia would have to pick a player who has made less than 800 first class runs. How can they expect him to bat all day and make a big score when he has never got close to that before? Can anyone think of an opening Test batsman with as poor a record?

West Indies win again!

Can you believe it, two wins in a row! It was a really good match to win with the West Indies constantly trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. At the end Chanderpaul, who had badly farmed the strike, had to hit ten from the last two balls: straight four and a pulled six. Magnificent, just what crowds want to see. A wonderful piece of camera work showed the ball just clearing Jayawardene on the boundary and him picking up the ball and throwing it in disgust.