West Indies summon unforgiving spirit of old as England suffer recognisable batting collapse

West Indies (289 & 127-6) lead England (77) by 339 runs​: England went from a manageble 44-2 to a miserable 49-7 in eight overs as the West Indies attack made their way through the batsmen with relative ease

Jonathan Liew
Bridgetown
Thursday 24 January 2019 22:55 GMT
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Jonathan Liew reports from day two between West Indies and England

In a way, it was just like old times. Like watching classic archive footage, or unspooling a golden reel of memory. You’d need a little imagination to complete the tableau, of course. You’d need to picture the Kensington Oval as it once was: shimmering with maroon flags, bouncing to the beat of a kettle drum, not full of sunburned, gourd-shaped British holidaymakers paying £80 a ticket. You’d need to remember the days when Test cricket ruled Barbados, when news of a wicket would spread across the island from village to village, radio to radio, like flaming beacons. But the essence of it, happily, was familiar enough. Once more, the pacemen of the West Indies were laying England to waste, and a sight it was to behold.

They may not be household names like the great Caribbean fast-bowling quartets of the past - Kemar Roach, Shannon Gabriel, Jason Holder, Alzarri Joseph - but they are the very best these islands have to offer, and over 30 pulsating overs, they were far, far too good for England. One by one the visiting batsmen came and went, like prizes on a game-show conveyor belt. None lasted more than an hour. None was able to score more than 17. And while this felt like merely the latest episode in an evergreen soap opera of England batting woe, the real show here was the wonderful West Indies attack, who scented just the merest whiff of English foreboding, and smoked it through to its nightmarish conclusion.

The crux of the collapse occurred in the first hour of the afternoon session, as England subsided from a manageable 44-2 to a miserable 49-7 in the space of just eight overs. For regular viewers of English cricket, there will have been little that was novel or even particularly interesting about this. Batting calamities are simply built into the general experience, like bad weather or email spam. The only real observation to be made is that England’s claim to batting depth was exposed here as a flimsy fallacy. A few lower-order rescue acts are an extremely poor substitute for a consistent Test-class batting unit.

But how skilfully it was exposed! This wasn’t a surprise, by the way, or at least, it shouldn’t have been: over the last year the West Indies have quietly been assembling one of the world’s best pace attacks, one capable of competing in all conditions but most effective in its own. The reason they are ranked No8 in the world is because their batting and spin bowling are not yet up to scratch. But with a decent score on the board - bolstered by some late swipes from Shimron Hetmyer on the second morning - a helpful crosswind, a shiny new Dukes ball and a pitch already starting to go up and down a little, the scene was ripe for havoc.

It was Holder who made the initial breakthrough, getting Keaton Jennings caught in the gully. Holder is an exceptionally difficult bowler to line up. For one thing, there’s the height. He’s not quick - around 82mph - the same as James Anderson - but the bounce he gets from his 6ft 7in frame strongly discourages batsmen from getting on the front foot. Then there’s the little syncopated beat in his action, which means the ball is delivered just a fraction later than the batsman expects. To this, he adds a rich armoury of wobblers and scramble-seamers, such as the one that zagged beautifully in Joe Root’s pads, trapping him on the crease.

With Holder, you set up for the short ball and get surprised by the fuller one. With Roach, meanwhile, you set up for the fuller one, and get surprised by the short ball. Roach is almost a foot shorter than Holder, and while he fits the profile of a skiddy quick bowler, it’s almost a decade since he first emerged in a haze of pure aggression and a hail of 95mph lightning bolts, which saw Indian Premier League franchises tussling furiously for his signature in 2010.

He’s 30 now, slower but wiser, more craftsman than gunman. His control is sublime, his cutters are desperately hard to pick, and when the ball swings for him, as it did here, batsmen edge forward and leave themselves vulnerable to the sharp, vicious riser. That was what did for Rory Burns and Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler and Moeen Ali, even if Moeen’s dismissal - caught at fine-leg first ball top-edging a pull - bore just the faintest ring of farce.

England could do little to prevail the powerful West Indies attack

The tail was polished off by Gabriel - the one genuine speedster in the line-up - and Joseph, the wiry Antiguan virtually unrecognisable from the bowler who looked so bereft in his last Test outing at Edgbaston in 2017. With Holder declining to enforce the follow-on, England did at least manage to claw back a little ground in the evening session. Indeed, they managed to induce a collapse of their own, the West Indies slipping from 52-0 to 61-5 in the space of around half an hour. Moeen and Ben Stokes did the damage, the former getting some nice dip and skid off the pitch, the latter once more proving that at his best, he doesn’t so much play the situation as make the situation play him.

But Hetmyer and Shane Dowrich managed to arrest the slide, hitting lumps out of the England spinners, and with the lead edging towards 350, the Test is surely beyond England now. Their task will be to salvage some pride and regroup ahead of next week’s second Test in Antigua. For the West Indies, meanwhile, a chance to seal the victory that just maybe, just maybe, could be the start of something.

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