6th May
The first four West Indians to bowl in this Test Match have the given names: Jerome, Fidel, Lionel and Suleiman. Strauss, the English captain will have to choose from a Stuart, a James, a Tim, and two Grahams. If you like a romantic, even swashbuckling tinge to your cricket, you should like the West Indians. Their tradition’s notable for packs of bowlers who value speed above all other virtues, and a succession of batsmen who value style over accumulation.
The team in England this year may struggle to live up to their illustrious forebears but two players stand out. Captain Chris Gayle is a cricketer I’d always pay to watch. In the field he’s phlegmatic to the point of apparent doziness, which doesn’t make for convincing captaincy, although in the middle of a dodgy period for West Indian cricket, his players seem right behind him. But his batting can be excitingly violent and prolonged: even if he plays the ball softly it seems to be the immediate prelude to some act of batting savagery. As they say, when he hits the ball, it stays hit. Given his chosen sartorial style I suppose you could say he bats with bling. And his slow bowling is severely under-rated. It’s not that he turns the ball, although he does just enough with it – it’s more that with his height he manages to disguise subtle changes of pace and flight. The batsmen never find it easy to attack him, for all that the proposition seems simple.
The other man to watch is opening bowler Fidel Edwards. He’s the first of a little crew of recent international bowlers who bowl quickly with an unconventional low, slingy action. Like England’s hero of a decade ago, Darren Gough, he prefers a knowing smile to an insult when he almost but not quite defeats a batsman. His figures don’t flatter him. For a short man he generates a lot of speed (up around 94 mph at his quickest), but maybe that same lack of inches means consistently threatening bounce eludes him.
Now you know the characters. So how did they do? Gayle won the toss and asked England to bat. This may have been an attacking move – when the two teams played each other last winter, England’s batting proved vulnerable early in that series – but I rather think it was defensively minded. The tourists had lost their previous match and struggled in the other warm-up game as their own batsmen tried to fathom sappy English conditions, where the ball cuts (seams) off the pitch far more than it would in the Caribbean. Had they batted and lost wickets on the first morning, the game might well have been decided then and there. So it was safety first for Gayle, and a closing score of 289 for 7 shows his decision to be marginally the right one. If the Lords pitch does what it has done in the recent past and flattens out, it may turn out to have been a very good option, but right now, it’s too close to call. Edwards bowled very well. He dismissed Kevin Pietersen first ball with an unplayable delivery which squared the batsman up. Many would have played at air but unfortunately Pietersen was good enough to get an edge to the wicketkeeper. Dinesh Ramdin took the smartest of catches, having initially moved the wrong way. That’s how good the ball was. For England, two of the immediate returnees from the South African tournament had a day to forget. Pietersen was unlucky, and Collingwood made only eight. But don’t blame international travel. The third, Bopara, made an excellent century with confident shots all round the ground. He’s stocky and wristy, and when he hits straight he looks very convincing indeed, a little reminiscent of his mentor Graham Gooch, in stature, swarthiness and follow-through. England owed a lot to him today: the other contributions were minor, although Prior played with enterprise.
Hard luck, Michael Vaughan. Unless something most surprising happens, Bopara’s innings today spells the end of his international career. Publicity was given to some of Vaughan’s ‘art’ last week, but on the evidence offered I’m not sure that’s a way to go.
The first four West Indians to bowl in this Test Match have the given names: Jerome, Fidel, Lionel and Suleiman. Strauss, the English captain will have to choose from a Stuart, a James, a Tim, and two Grahams. If you like a romantic, even swashbuckling tinge to your cricket, you should like the West Indians. Their tradition’s notable for packs of bowlers who value speed above all other virtues, and a succession of batsmen who value style over accumulation.
The team in England this year may struggle to live up to their illustrious forebears but two players stand out. Captain Chris Gayle is a cricketer I’d always pay to watch. In the field he’s phlegmatic to the point of apparent doziness, which doesn’t make for convincing captaincy, although in the middle of a dodgy period for West Indian cricket, his players seem right behind him. But his batting can be excitingly violent and prolonged: even if he plays the ball softly it seems to be the immediate prelude to some act of batting savagery. As they say, when he hits the ball, it stays hit. Given his chosen sartorial style I suppose you could say he bats with bling. And his slow bowling is severely under-rated. It’s not that he turns the ball, although he does just enough with it – it’s more that with his height he manages to disguise subtle changes of pace and flight. The batsmen never find it easy to attack him, for all that the proposition seems simple.
The other man to watch is opening bowler Fidel Edwards. He’s the first of a little crew of recent international bowlers who bowl quickly with an unconventional low, slingy action. Like England’s hero of a decade ago, Darren Gough, he prefers a knowing smile to an insult when he almost but not quite defeats a batsman. His figures don’t flatter him. For a short man he generates a lot of speed (up around 94 mph at his quickest), but maybe that same lack of inches means consistently threatening bounce eludes him.
Now you know the characters. So how did they do? Gayle won the toss and asked England to bat. This may have been an attacking move – when the two teams played each other last winter, England’s batting proved vulnerable early in that series – but I rather think it was defensively minded. The tourists had lost their previous match and struggled in the other warm-up game as their own batsmen tried to fathom sappy English conditions, where the ball cuts (seams) off the pitch far more than it would in the Caribbean. Had they batted and lost wickets on the first morning, the game might well have been decided then and there. So it was safety first for Gayle, and a closing score of 289 for 7 shows his decision to be marginally the right one. If the Lords pitch does what it has done in the recent past and flattens out, it may turn out to have been a very good option, but right now, it’s too close to call. Edwards bowled very well. He dismissed Kevin Pietersen first ball with an unplayable delivery which squared the batsman up. Many would have played at air but unfortunately Pietersen was good enough to get an edge to the wicketkeeper. Dinesh Ramdin took the smartest of catches, having initially moved the wrong way. That’s how good the ball was. For England, two of the immediate returnees from the South African tournament had a day to forget. Pietersen was unlucky, and Collingwood made only eight. But don’t blame international travel. The third, Bopara, made an excellent century with confident shots all round the ground. He’s stocky and wristy, and when he hits straight he looks very convincing indeed, a little reminiscent of his mentor Graham Gooch, in stature, swarthiness and follow-through. England owed a lot to him today: the other contributions were minor, although Prior played with enterprise.
Hard luck, Michael Vaughan. Unless something most surprising happens, Bopara’s innings today spells the end of his international career. Publicity was given to some of Vaughan’s ‘art’ last week, but on the evidence offered I’m not sure that’s a way to go.
