West Indies
v England
1st Test, Day
2: Nightmare in the Caribbean
January 24th 2019
After the shenanigans with the new ball at the end of the day, it was
hard to avoid the sinking feeling that England might have, yet again, fallen
for a Caribbean sucker punch. Sadly, it did not take long for these suspicions
to be confirmed. Time and again they have arrived with high hopes, had a
nightmare start to the series and then been unable to make headway on a series
of dead tracks designed for timeless Tests or, for those of a more
conspiratorial disposition, to protect the West Indian series lead. The 2019
Caribbean tour took just four sessions to conform to that pattern. 30-1 at
Lunch. All out and facing the Follow-on at Tea on Day 2. Yes, it’s good to be
back in Barbados.
What was obvious was that the bowlers had to nip out the last two
wickets quickly and retain the momentum because, if the West Indian bowlers
found the same help that England had found, 280 might be an awfully
useful-looking score by the end of Day 2. The sinking feeling was not helped by
the way that young Shimron Hetmyer protected his partner, took the singles late
in the over and hit what was there to be hit as the score crept up towards the
300-mark that should have been unattainable. An edge from a brutal Stokes bouncer
flew past Ben Foakes’s desperate stretch, balls eluded edges, false shots fell
safe. And all the while the wags were calling for Joe Root to throw the ball to
Stuart Broad – yes, the same wags who have been calling for him to be dropped
through most of his career. Huge outswinger from Stokes, nick, into the gloves,
given… but nothing on UltraEdge on review. The bowlers could not bowl a maiden
to Hetmyer to get a full over at Alzarri Joseph and when Ben Stokes finally did
manage five consecutive dot balls, the last ball flew to the boundary to take
Hetmyer into the 80s and the score ever-closer to the 300 that the West Indians
wanted before the start. However, with Joseph in his sights, Jimmy Anderson
made no mistake in the next over and a simple catch to Jos Buttler at 2nd
Slip gave him his twenty-seventh five-for. Five balls later, Stokes got Hetmyer
to edge to Ben Foakes and the innings was over. For England, Anderson and
Stokes were magnificent. For the West Indies, Hetmyer was immense: surely the
WICB cannot manage to lose him to the Test side too through incompetence and
mismanagement?
Once the tail had been dismissed, Jennings, Burns and Bairstow had to do
their job. This was not going to be suitable for those of a nervous
disposition. A confident start by Jennings strangely did nothing to calm
nerves. Taking the lion’s share of the strike and doing almost all the scoring,
he got a start, drove without due care and attention and was convicted at
gully. Only three years ago, Haseeb Hameed and Keaton Jennings had wonderful
Test debuts in India and England supporters were thinking that they had a
ready-made opening pair for the next decade or decade and a half: Hameed’s
fortunes have only gone downward since he left that tour with a broken finger
and an average of 9.7 for Lancashire in 2018 makes one wonder how much longer
his county career will last without a sudden change of fortunes. Jennings has
had two golden streaks in County cricket, each followed by a prolonged
run-drought: the fans have lost patience, how long will England’s last? There
is no doubt that, having tried so many openers since Andrew Strauss retired,
England do not want to chop and change again, but nor can they afford to start
an Ashes series with an opener desperately short on form and confidence. Plan A
is to support him in public and hope that he gets enough runs on the tour to
stop wagging tongues. Plan B is to hope that someone on the County circuit gets
a thousand runs before the end of May as an opener. Having got a start in 16 of
his last 20 Test innings, a single score of 50+ - albeit a monumental one in
Sri Lanka – is no kind of return, but suggests that the issue is as much
psychological as technical.
That said, as England staggered from 30-1 to 77 all out, Jennings’s 17
was comfortably (uncomfortably?) the top score of the innings and the opening
partnership of 23, by some way the largest of the innings (the next best was
12). Things were put in sharp perspective as the West Indian openers put on a
fifty opening partnership. A cynic would have said that they already had more
than enough of a lead to win, but this was “grind their faces into the dirt
time”. The next stage of this process will be to provide England with two low,
slow shirtfronts for the 2nd and 3rd Test: yes, we have
been caught this way before. The England opening attack, at a gentle low-80s,
just did not have the pace, or the height to exploit the devil in the pitch. As
in the first innings, it took the introduction of Moeen Ali to break the
opening partnership. The difference this time was that, suddenly, the rhythm
was there, the ball started to turn and, suddenly, it seemed that Moeen was
bowling hand grenades in a minefield. With Ben Stokes getting seriously
wound-up, 52-0 became 61-5, with four wickets falling for one run in fourteen
balls. You really wish that the bowlers had shown this fight before the West
Indies batsmen had got away from them the previous day. However, as England
had, the West Indian batsmen decided to apply the long handle to counter the
clatter of wickets and, unlike for England, it worked.
The clatter of wickets had to continue for England to have any
remote chance and that meant removing Hetmyer. Easier said than done. A second
fifty partnership in the innings, including a brutal assault on Adil Rashid’s
first over and any fantasists who harboured thoughts of a great escape were
sadly disabused of their notions. With a lead of 339 going into Day 3, the West
Indies will expect confidently to win around Tea tomorrow. It has been
depressing to watch England implode, washing away all the successes against
India and Sri Lanka. Make no mistake, England are going to lose and lose badly,
but they desperately need to show some fight in the second innings and to bat a
lot better, if only for their self-respect. Australia are watching England and are shaking in their boots, but it is with laughter, not fear.
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