The Shorter Wisden 2013 (55 page)

The side that arrived in May did so almost unnoticed. In fact, it was barely a side at all, for their strength had been plundered by the lure of the Indian Premier League. Absent from the Test
series was a string of players, most notably Chris Gayle – still at odds with the West Indies Cricket Board, despite rumours that the stand-off was being sorted out – and all-rounder
Dwayne Bravo. The diamond-studded travellers, Gayle included, were back for the limited-overs games that followed the three Tests, but their effect hardly proved dynamic: West Indies did not win an
international match in any format.

During the Tests they were outplayed by a much better side, with England captain Andrew Strauss casting aside doubts about his batting – at least until they resurfaced against South Africa
– by making hundreds at Lord’s, for which he received a memorably affectionate standing ovation, and Trent Bridge. The West Indians, under the virtuous leadership of Darren Sammy, at
least gave a spirited account of themselves, which in itself exceeded expectation. It was just that their overall efforts tended to be capsized by the occasional catastrophic session.

Hopes were higher for the one-day internationals and especially the single Twenty20 game, the format best suited to their personnel. But the fizz went flat, and West Indies’ only success
of the tour came when they thrashed Middlesex in a 50-over warm-up at Lord’s. And instead of being fortified by the return of the IPL stars, as he should have been, Sammy seemed to lose some
of his authority.

It was a lazy finish to a trip that had hinted at steady improvement, and it allowed England to shrug off the loss of Kevin Pietersen, whose retirement – later rescinded – from
international limited-overs cricket would spark an unedifying chain of events. In the one-day internationals, as in the Tests, they ran out comfortable winners, with Ian Bell, promoted to open with
Alastair Cook in Pietersen’s place, scoring a century in the first match, and Cook repeating the dose in the second.

Throughout, however, it was West Indies who faced the greater off-field issues. The impasse between Gayle and the WICB had been the most unwelcome of distractions, disrupting the efforts of
coach Ottis Gibson to develop a team in the truest sense of the word, and apparently based on a petty squabble rooted in semantics: two bald men fighting over a comb, as someone put it. The
intransigence of the WICB, and Gayle’s occasional faux bemusement, did neither credit. So while Gayle roamed the world, hitting sixes for large sums of money, he became a political football
back in the Caribbean. His return to the side was worked out only after the involvement of the premiers of St Vincent, Antigua & Barbuda, and Jamaica, his home country.

All the while, criticism was heaped on Gibson, in particular by a number of West Indian greats, including Sir Vivian Richards and Michael Holding. They discerned a blinkered management style
that excluded players Gibson regarded as not fully committed to his personal vision. So the experienced batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan, who had enjoyed such a successful series against England in the
Caribbean in early 2009, spent the summer playing for Leicestershire; and the claims of Jerome Taylor, whose legendary bowling spell at Sabina Park in that same series had paradoxically been the
catalyst for the renaissance of England rather than West Indies, and who was available again after a lengthy spell of injury, were ignored. Neither, it was argued by Gibson, had demonstrated
sufficient commitment to replace more dedicated, if less experienced players – and almost certainly less talented ones.

Preparation for the First Test, in matches against Sussex and the England Lions, was scarcely a success. Hampered by appalling weather, West Indies were restricted to 34 overs in three days at
Hove. That was followed by the embarrassment of a ten-wicket defeat by the Lions at Northampton, where the promise of Kieran Powell’s century was offset by hundreds from James Taylor and, in
an unbroken opening stand of 197, Joe Root. With weather conditions expected to suit England’s band of seamers, West Indies were given little hope of providing more than token resistance in
the Tests.

It was a careless assumption, for at times they played challenging cricket. But they were desperately hampered by the struggles of the top four: Adrian Barath, Powell, Kirk Edwards (who endured
a torrid time, was ill during the second innings at Trent Bridge, and dropped for the final Test at Edgbaston), and – most disappointingly of all – Darren Bravo, Dwayne’s
half-brother.

On the credit side came predictable resistance from Shivnarine Chanderpaul (or “Chanderwall”, as he had become known over the years, after so many hours playing a lone hand of
resistance). Twice at Lord’s he held the line, although he too was absent from the Third Test, for reasons largely unexplained but with speculation ranging from injury to matters of
discipline. Despite his runs – he had recently passed 10,000 in Tests – Chanderpaul was no favourite of Gibson’s. In the Second Test, Sammy went a considerable way to answering
those who doubted his credentials by surviving a nervy spell late in his innings to register a maiden Test hundred, a vibrant affair full of long-levered strokes.

Kemar Roach put the wind up England with some searing pace: had there been another hour’s play on the penultimate evening at Lord’s, when the ball moved sharply and he had the top
order on the rack, there might have been a different result. Roach, unfortunately, was not to last the series because of a shin injury, and neither was the promisingly threatening fast bowler
Shannon Gabriel, who made his debut at Lord’s but soon flew home because of back spasms.

If Gabriel had not broken down, however, the series would have been deprived of one of its most memorable passages of play. At Edgbaston, a match in which England rested James Anderson and
Stuart Broad – to their evident chagrin – and brought in Steven Finn and Graham Onions, Gabriel’s own replacement, Tino Best, battered his way to 95, the highest score by a No. 11
in Test history. He and the wicketkeeper, Denesh Ramdin, added 143 for the last wicket, just eight shy of the Test record, with Ramdin celebrating his second Test century in controversial fashion
by holding up a sheet of paper on which he had written a colloquial retort to perceived criticism from Viv Richards both before and during the series. This show of impertinence – bordering on
lese-majesty, given Richards’s status in the Caribbean – would cost him 20% of his match fee. But at least it showed he cared.

The Third Test also saw the first appearance of Sunil Narine, supposedly a mystery spinner, who had been bamboozling batsmen in the IPL, but singularly failed to make any impact here: across the
three formats, he managed one wicket for 199.

The surprise success was Marlon Samuels, whose Test career stretched back to December 2000 and included a two-year ban for alleged misdemeanours in connection with subcontinental bookmakers
– charges he denied. What was certain was that this maverick batsman had always fallen short of the level his talent demanded. Now, that changed. At Lord’s he made 31 and 86. Then, at
Trent Bridge, he scored 117 – his third Test hundred and first for four years, adding 204 for the seventh wicket with Sammy – and an unbeaten 76 out of 165 all out. He batted nearly ten
hours in the match, allying the sort of attention span that had previously eluded him with all his customary style. Finally, at rain-sodden Edgbaston, he made another 76. With 386 runs from five
innings at an average of 96, there was no question about West Indies’ Man of the Series.

Despite losing the Tests 2–0, they could draw considerable encouragement which they were able to carry over into a home series against New Zealand. But their performance in the one-day
games was dismal: the two matches that survived the weather were lost by 114 runs and eight wickets. Gayle’s differences with the WICB had by then been settled, so he joined the squad, only
to miss the first match, at the Rose Bowl, through injury. And of the others returning from their IPL commitments, only Dwayne Bravo had any positive impact on a team that now appeared less
close-knit than before.

In the face of this, Sammy – who expected and deserved better – shrank back. There appeared, from the periphery, to be a them-and-us situation. Only in the Twenty20 international, at
Trent Bridge, did the West Indians compete, and even then they were undone by an extraordinary batting display from the young Nottinghamshire opener Alex Hales, whose 99 was the highest by an
England batsman in the format. That innings alone may have been symptomatic of the difference between the sides: somehow, England always found a way. For all their progress, West Indies were
evidently still finding theirs.

ENGLAND v WEST INDIES

First Investec Test

A
NDREW
M
ILLER

At Lord’s, May 17–21. England won by five wickets. Toss: England. Test debuts: J. M. Bairstow; S. T. Gabriel.

Lord’s is not a happy hunting ground for visiting teams in May. This was the 12th such Test it had hosted since the extension of the international season in 2000, and England had now won
eight of them, to go with four draws – plus a sense of ownership that previous generations had been unable to cultivate at their most regular haunt. As with the 1980s West Indians at
Bridgetown, or Australia at the Gabba in the 2000s, bearding England in their lair in early-season conditions was becoming one of the toughest challenges in the sport, not least because the
opposition tend to be the weaker of the summer’s Test visitors. Thanks to Strauss, who produced a timely return to form with his 20th Test century – and his fifth at Lord’s
– West Indies were never quite close enough to parity to threaten an upset. Nevertheless, with Chanderpaul confirming his world No. 1 ranking by scoring 178 runs for once out, they made
England sweat.

Despite the margin, the game was as close as any team has come to challenging them at Lord’s, at any stage of the season, since Australia’s victory in 2005. Had a pumped-up Roach
been able to bowl more than two fearsome overs in the fourth-evening gloom – when he bounced out Strauss for one, had nightwatchman Anderson caught behind down the leg side, and came within
an inch or two of trapping Trott leg-before first ball – the result might have been different. At ten for two overnight chasing 191, then at 57 for four the following morning, England were
vulnerable. But Cook closed down the crisis with a sheet-anchor 79, and was perfectly complemented by Bell’s free-wheeling 63 in a match-clinching stand of 132.

In some ways, it had been a curious contest. England’s dominance was at times laughably absolute, not least while Anderson was mocking the West Indian top order with his peerless command
of lateral movement. But it was Broad, the less impressive of the two new-ball bowlers, who cashed in on their obvious frailties with a career-best 11 for 165. He joined Gubby Allen, Keith Miller
and Ian Botham as the only men to etch their names on to three separate Lord’s honours boards: five wickets in an innings, ten in a match and, thanks to his 169 against Pakistan in 2010, a
century.

The public perception of the Test was undoubtedly tainted by the absentees in the West Indian ranks, most notably Chris Gayle, who – despite being more than 4,000 miles from St
John’s Wood – snaffled the limelight on the first evening with an incredible 128 not out from 62 balls in the IPL in Delhi. Yet Gayle’s presence hadn’t exactly been
conducive to team excellence in the same fixture three years earlier, when he arrived in the country 52 hours before leading West Indies to a three-day defeat. This time, under the dedicated
leadership of Sammy, they set out to be greater than the sum of their parts. By and large, they succeeded.

There was a stoicism to West Indies’ performance that could only really be appreciated in hindsight. Perhaps that says more about Chanderpaul’s peculiarly joyless approach to Test
batting than anything else but, having spent more than 24 hours at the crease during the 2007 tour, he now loitered for a further ten hours and 25 minutes across 425 balls. With a little more
urgency, he could well have become the first visiting batsman since George Headley in 1939 to leave Lord’s with a century in both innings. Instead, he ran out of first-innings partners on 87,
and was extracted on the sweep for 91 in the second.

Aesthetics never came into the equation but, on the fourth morning, while he and the rehabilitated Samuels were adding 157 for the fifth wicket to turn an apparently routine defeat into a bid
for the spoils, Chanderpaul’s effectiveness was self-evident. Unfortunately, too many of West Indies’ other moments of resistance were undermined by their own failings – most
notably a pair of top-order run-outs, one in each innings, and the brace of loose strokes that ended two promising performances from Barath, the young opener from Trinidad.

The most significant innings of the match, and indeed of the series, came from Strauss, who admitted to having removed a “monkey from my back” in recording his first Test hundred
since the start of the 2010-11 Ashes, 18 months and 26 innings earlier. After leading his side to four Test defeats out of five in the winter, and turning 35 in March, he recognised the need to
silence those who doubted his continued stomach for the role, even if he was still some way from any votes of no-confidence within his team.

Strauss’s home ground – the venue of his century on debut against New Zealand in 2004, and of his most recent hundred on home soil, against Australia in 2009 – was the perfect
place to staunch such anxieties. Run-scoring was rarely straightforward against an attack featuring not only Roach but the powerful Shannon Gabriel, who picked up four wickets on debut (followed by
a back injury). On 95, Strauss was dropped at slip off a no-ball from Fidel Edwards. But a cathartic cut through backward point off Sammy settled the issue.

From 259 for three overnight, England fell away slightly on the third day as West Indies settled into a disciplined off-stump line – although Bairstow’s working-over on Test debut by
Roach was immediately noted by video analysts everywhere. But an unruffled 61 from Bell, and Swann’s carefree 30 in 25 balls, massaged the lead past 150, and the loss of three West Indian
wickets for no runs in nine deliveries immediately before tea reasserted the imbalance.