Tea and Biscuits in the West Indies
Day 4: Barbados. A Captain’s knock from Brathwaite surely seals a 5th day draw for the West Indies.
Cricket is a strangely beautiful game with it’s own lexicon, pace of life, teas and lunches, chirping and sledging, being in and out and sometimes back in again all whilst liberally coated in endless statistics, TV umpiring decisions, instant replays and, seemingly dependent upon your place of birth, beguiling or boring. As you would expect from a day’s Test Match cricket, all of the above and more were present and correct today. We had a perfect off spinning ball that finally defeated the West Indian Captain Kraigg Brathwaite and beautifully pinging back his “off peg” in the process. Chris Woakes finally received a reward for his mammoth amount of overs bowled as Kemar Roach played all around a “straight one” to be dismissed LBW or “Leg Before Wicket” for just 1 run from 17 balls. And there’s those damned statistics again: 1 run, 17 balls received and all the while coated with the game’s own language of being dismissed by the method of LBW as well as a “Night Watchman” “hanging around” for 19 runs from 75 deliveries and because of the role played in the game, this is seen as a roaring success, and rightly so.
A “Night Watchman” is primarily a bowler who bats at the tail end of a day to protect the better batsmen before him and thus allowing them to sleep peacefully before batting on a fresh new day. Alzarri Joseph therefore carried out his team duty perfectly today as despite the statistics that swamp our beautiful game, it’s still very much a human game played by wonderfully gifted cricketing humans, and today’s human story belongs firmly and completely to the Captain of the West Indies, Kraigg Brathwaite.
Before being bowled by the very epitome of a cricketing “Jaffa” or unplayable delivery from Jack Leach, Brathwaite had batted for as near as damnit two days in the Test Match from a ridiculous 489 balls received, and thus allowing the West Indian Captain to craft 160 valuable runs for his side. The vagaries of Test Match cricket are legion and here’s a prime example. Brathwaite’s human efforts appear slow and ponderous but perfectly befitting the nature of the game as a whole. After England posted 500+ runs he knew his side couldn’t surpass that total on such a dreadful, lifeless wicket so in keeping with the long held traditions of cricket he was perfectly happy to “bat out time” and thereby reducing the chances of his side losing the match. The longer England have to bat again, the bigger their lead will become and the sooner they can declare and turn the heat up on the last day when Brathwaite’s team can only think of drawing the match. Brathwaite saw 3 (three!) new balls in his utterly fantastic innings and whilst not a spectacle of attacking verve, perfectly suited to the match situation.
Brathwaite and his team started the day 219 runs behind, reduced this to 156 by the lunch break and to 111 by the tea interval. When his side had finally been “knocked over” in the final session by a tired and weary set of English bowlers his West Indian team were still 96 runs in arrears on first innings despite totalling an impressive 411. By the time stumps were drawn at the end of the day’s play with England 40–0, Brathwaite’s team were back to being 136 runs behind with one day still remaining. To confuse matters further, and beautifully in keeping with this strange old sport and it’s quirky individual way of being, England maybe 40–0 but they are in fact 136–0 when you combine the total run lead they enjoy.
Statistics are everywhere.
Brathwaite’s incredible innings is by far and away today’s human highlight but statistics often lead to human stories: Jack Leach’s phenomenal number of overs bowled (70!) or Saqib Mahmood’s first two important statistics of his Test Match career and his deserved wickets of Jason Holder and Veerasammy Permaul. His first wicket in Test cricket came courtesy of a catch from fellow debutant Matthew Fisher and whilst that’s a statistics for two players playing their first ever Test Match, it’s the human story that prevails above and beyond the etchings in any scorebook.
The statistics are as simple as the position of the match is as crystal clear as possible to the super human efforts required by either side to win this Test Match. With England 136 runs ahead they’ll look to roughly double this with a brisk slap and dash with the bat in the morning session before setting the West Indies a not impossible but improbable total to chase in the final two sessions. To win the game the West Indies will have to score a huge total in two sessions and a total of runs far, far in excess of what they’ve scored thus far in three sessions, and on this lifeless, uninspiring wicket. For England to win they have to take 10 West Indian wickets with 2 debutants playing their first Test Match and a bowling unit that has just spent two days in the cricketing “dirt”.
It’s an absolutely nailed on draw, but time will tell.
See you tomorrow!
Thanks for reading. Should you wish to read my ramblings on the three previous day’s play in this Test Match:
