A distressing tour came to a predictable end, but as a huge relief, for the West Indies here yesterday.
From the first bell of a one-sided contest, they have been like an outclassed and unprepared boxer relentlessly pummelled by unforgiving opponents, bent on revenge for losses in the preceding away bout a couple of months earlier.
They were beaten as comprehensively in the last round yesterday as they were in the previous three. The margins in the Tests were 10 wickets in three days and an innings in four. In the other ODI, in Bristol on Sunday, it was by six wickets with 14 overs to spare. It was, statistically, 58 runs this time. It was frankly wider than that.
Against the kind of indisciplined bowling and shoddy fielding that was their consistent hallmark, England compiled the highest total in any ODI at Edgbaston, 328 for seven.
On another chilly, if mainly sunny, day, England were sent in by Chris Gayle. The foundation for their daunting position was set by captain Andrew Strauss, leading from the front, and Ravi Bopara with an opening stand of 81 off 15 overs which Matt Prior and Owais Shah built on, just as they pleased, adding 149.
Prior, a serial plunderer of West Indies bowling, helped himself to a run-a-ball 87 and Shah 75 off 65. They were never under any pressure, leading into the batting power play that yielded 55 off five overs. The last 10 overs brought 98.
No one went for less than five an over. Ravi Rampaul, Fidel Edwards, Dwayne Bravo and Keiron Pollard were all taken for more than seven. It would have been more but for Runako Morton’s athletic patrolling of the square boundary, a contrast to much of the fumbling and weak throwing in other areas.
Once captain Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan were out with only 22 scored in the reply, the dye was cast.
There was a bit of a flourish from Dwayne Bravo with 26 off 22 balls and Denesh Ramdin, 45 off 48, and some irrelevant blows from the lower order. But they were always going to go down again, this time by 58 runs.
The saddest site was Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the shining light for the past two years in all forms of the game, so out of sorts that he could hardly get the ball off the square. It typified the limp West Indies effort throughout the tour.
He pushed and he prodded 68 off 108 balls. Only his ingrained practice of not surrendering his wicket kept him going so long.
This was a shadow of the Chanderpaul with his unbeaten 112 against the same opponents in the second ODI in the Caribbean in March that included 24 in an over off Steve Harmison. Or the batsman who launched four and six off the last two balls off the innings to beat Sri Lanka a year ago.
But this was a shadow of the team itself that, until now, has been on a gradual curve of improvement, a team that beat, even if barely, England in the preceding Test series before losing the ODIs 3-2, mainly on a miscalculation of the Duckworth-Lewis system.
There were a host of reasons for it. Indifference was the most obvious.
They now have a week to ready themselves for the World Twenty20 Championships. Australia and Sri Lanka are in their first round group and, for all the fickleness of the shortest form of the game, their attitude will have to suddenly change if they are to diminish the distress of the past month.
