This was a throwback to the bad old days.
As West Indian wickets tumbled at Lord’s yesterday – four off six balls in one frenetic period, seven for 29 off 41 balls before an irrelevant 24 from the last pair – dark memories were evoked of double digit totals and two and three day losses.
Gone were the resilience and the combativeness of recent series that prompted optimism of an overdue revival. There was, instead, the sense of defeatism so prevalent for so long. An innings loss before the weekend seems certain.
The malaise set in after tea on the previous afternoon through the lack of concentration and preparation that created six missed catches just when they were in the ascendancy.
Such carelessness deflates any team, not least one so heavily reliant on so few experienced players and in conditions that test technique and temperament in equal measure.
It required inspired overnight leadership from captain and coach to lift their players out of the resulting depression. England had escaped from their stranglehold but, at 289 for seven, their position remained tenuous. A quick end to their innings would have left the contest on even keel.
What was to follow was apparent even before a ball was bowled.
There was no energy, no enthusiasm as the team traipsed onto the Lord’s outfield and their mood sunk even further when, in spite of a second new ball, Fidel Edwards could gain none of the late swing that rendered him such a menace on the first day. So it was for Jerome Taylor and Lionel Baker as well.
In the circumstances, Graham Swann – primarily an off-spinner but also a batsman with four first-class hundreds and an average of 25 to his name, in case they didn’t notice – prospered.
As the bowlers sought a full length searching for nonexistent movement, he thrust forward and drove with gusto, dominating a partnership of 93 with the overnight centurion, Ravi Bopara.
It wasn’t until after lunch that Edwards could finally gain the wickets he was denied by his butter-fingered teammates on the first day, rounding off the innings with six for 92 in his column on the scoresheet. It really should have been more for appreciably less.
The lead-up matches before the Test established that West Indies batsmen new to England would find it difficult to cope in the early spring environment.
In the clear, hot Caribbean sunshine and on featureless pitches, the ARG, Kensington and Queen’s Park had yielded mountains of runs and broken bowlers’ hearts.
Now tall Englishmen with a height advantage of several inches on their West Indian counterparts rejoiced on the kind of surface on which they were raised.
The ball seamed and bounced, not alarmingly but enough to encourage them and unsettle their opponents. As always, the West Indies would have to depend on their three linchpins, captain Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
By the close, Gayle and Sarwan had been dismissed twice in the day, undone by seam and bounce for a combined score of 49.
Chanderpaul, for two years the game’s most immovable batsman, succumbed first ball to Swann whose classy off-spin that was obvious in the series in the West Indies made the decisive breaks at 99 for two, prising out the left-handers Devon Smith (for the fourth time in six innings), Chanderpaul and Brendon Nash.
It set up the fragile lower order to be taken care of by Graham Onions, an honest county seam and swing bowler on debut who gathered the last five wickets from 27 balls.
One incident reflected the West Indies’ unreadiness for the challenge.
Sulieman Benn was No.9 in the order. As the wickets tumbled, he was in the nets at the Nursery end, some 120 yards distant, directly opposite the pavilion. He had to hurry to report for duty.
When Lendl Simmons and Taylor were out in the same Onions over, he was still scrambling to pad up. It seemed an eternity before he hustled down the pavilion steps and onto the ground.
When he reached the pitch, he struggled to get his gloves and helmet on.
It was little wonder he lasted only three balls before he became one of the five to edge catches to the slip.
Nor is it any wonder that the West Indies find themselves in such a pickle after two days of the series.
