by John Wisden
Strauss also had some ticklish selections to make. With Stuart Broad now back home because of a calf injury, Finn returned for his first Test in ten. More surprisingly, Bresnan replaced Monty Panesar, so ending England’s experiment of playing two specialist spinners. Perhaps Strauss was swayed more by the stats than the conditions: in seven Tests together, Swann and Panesar had never experienced victory, while Bresnan could boast wins in all ten previous Test appearances. By mid-afternoon on the fifth day, it was 11 out of 11.
Losing the toss was no great hindrance for Strauss, since Anderson snatched three early wickets, including Sangakkara, out first ball again. Jayawardene, as ever, rescued the situation with another watchful, elegant century, and received dutiful support from Samaraweera and Mathews, back from injury in place of Dinesh Chandimal. Yet when Sri Lanka were all out for 275 before lunch on the second day, England had their chance.
The upper order duly dug in. Their use of the sweep shot was much more sparing and adroit than at Galle, so much so that neither opener dusted off the stroke until the 39th over. Strauss’s 61 stopped some of the rumblings, while Cook and Trott gave a reminder of the rewards of self-denial. Then came Pietersen, who would later be almost at a loss to explain such a spectacular return to form (his Test output over the winter had been far worse than his captain’s). “When I’m in nick, I like to play like that,” he said. “I’ve never been able to explain how I do it. It’s just instinct. If the ball is there to hit, I hit it.”
Sometimes Pietersen smashed balls that were not there to hit. Straight sixes peppered the boxes of the VIPs, and he could not resist employing his trademark switch hit, which led to an unexpected warning from umpire Asad Rauf. Three times in an over Dilshan, bowling off-breaks from round the wicket to a seven–two leg-side field, declined to release the ball because Pietersen – who began the over on 86 and finished it on 104 – was busy changing into a left-hander. On the third occasion, Pietersen received his warning; another would have added five penalty runs to Sri Lanka’s score.
In a rare but justifiable interpretation of the Laws, Pietersen was deemed to be time-wasting because he was causing the impasse that prevented the ball from being delivered. Dilshan was quite entitled to refrain from bowling once he saw Pietersen moving. The only question was whether Pietersen had begun to do so before Dilshan had entered his delivery stride; even with the benefit of replays, it was hard to say.
Whatever the precise sequence of events, the brief stand-off was in danger of overshadowing the fact that Pietersen’s century separated the teams. This was his 20th in Tests, and his 29th in all international matches, taking him past Graham Gooch’s England record; now the batting coach, Gooch was watching with rare contentment from the pavilion. England’s lead of 185 was sufficient.
Sri Lanka, who had sent in nightwatchman Prasad to face one over on the third evening, reached a healthy 215 for four on the fourth before Swann snatched two wickets in the penultimate over. They closed with a lead of only 33. Swann would finish with six wickets in the innings – including the prize scalp of Mahela Jayawardene on the final morning – and, for the second time, ten in the match. He also moved past Tony Lock (174 wickets) to become England’s third-most-productive Test spinner, finishing the series with 182: only Derek Underwood (297) and Jim Laker (193) remained above him. Curiously, Swann appeared to bowl better without having Panesar at the other end.
England needed 94 to win and – despite the early loss of Strauss for a duck and Trott for five – they did not hang around. Pietersen wrapped things up with 42 from 28 balls and his eighth six of the match, a mighty blow over square leg off his sparring partner Dilshan. It was a gem of a knock, bringing delight both to the England team and Delhi, who were eagerly awaiting his arrival in India.
Man of the Match: K. P. Pietersen. Man of the Series: D. P. M. D. Jayawardene.
Anderson 22–5–62–3; Finn 22–4–51–1; Bresnan 21–3–47–2; Patel 16–3–32–0; Swann 28.1–4–75–4; Pietersen 2–0–4–0. Second innings—Anderson 20–6–36–1; Finn 15.5–1–30–2; Swann 40–1–106–6; Bresnan 14–5–24–0; Patel 25–7–54–1; Pietersen 4–0–18–0.
Lakmal 22–4–81–0; Prasad 23–8–63–1; Herath 53–9–133–6; Dilshan 20–4–73–2; Randiv 34.3–4–107–1. Second innings—Dilshan 7.4–1–43–1; Herath 9–0–37–1; Randiv 3–0–16–0.
Umpires: Asad Rauf and B. N. J. Oxenford. Third umpire: R. J. Tucker.
Series referee: J. Srinath.
ENGLAND v WEST INDIES, 2012
REVIEW BY MIKE SELVEY
Test matches (3): England 2, West Indies 0
One-day internationals (3): England 2, West Indies 0
Twenty20 international (1): England 1, West Indies 0
Once upon a time, rather too long ago, the West Indians would roll into town with a swagger, and opponents would obligingly step aside. They had little choice. But if their arrival in England was familiar in one respect – this was their third visit for a Test tour in six summers – the swagger was understandably absent. The decline in their Test fortunes, previously the pride of the Caribbean – indeed the region’s only corporate representation, with the possible exception of the University of the West Indies – had been palpable. And, while a testing early-season tour of England had its moments, they never lasted long enough to change the thrust of the narrative.
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
ANDREW MILLER
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 ta
inted 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.