Atherton:
changes will be made | Debate:
who's to blame for England debacle? | Bell
and Panesar should be dropped | David
Gower: Gayle leads from the front | 51?
Fifty-blooming-one? | England
all out for 51 | England
sink to their knees | What the papers say
In a day that burnt many extraordinary images into the mind, one will live
longer than the others.
It was Jerome Taylor’s first ball after lunch. England had lost two wickets
before the interval, Alastair Cook in typical fashion nibbling at a ball
slanted across him by Taylor himself, and Ian Bell brainlessly cutting at a
ball teasingly dropped outside off stump by Sulieman Benn and being caught
behind, the shot of a dead man walking.
So Taylor, armed with a new ball that was only six overs old, had his tail up.
Another wicket now and England were in the gravest danger. But Pietersen had
first-innings runs under his belt and a million-dollar IPL contract in his
back pocket. Pietersen had also just taken a single off the last ball of the
previous over, from Benn, so he was off the mark, always an important thing
for settling Pietersen’s nerves. An hour of Pietersen and the West Indian
boarders could be repelled.
Taylor set off on what would prove the most memorable Jamaican sprint since
Usain Bolt returned from Beijing. The ball came out just right ... fast,
full and latent with outswing. It pitched at Pietersen’s feet, jack-knifing
him in his stance, before moving away to pluck out the off stump. At a
stroke, England’s hopes were shattered, as their subsequent collapse would
confirm. With their best player gone, the fight drained from their bodies,
the self-belief from their minds.
The West Indies players, on the other hand, careered off in a dance of
celebration. They knew they had the game won and so did the crowd.
Never believe those reports that said cricket in the Caribbean was dying. It
was just in mourning for the passing of the good days. The people still
loved the game, nursed their hurt, and waited for fortunes to change. The
whoops and hollers from the stands showed that the passion was still there.
There was the whiff of blood and it was the blood of Englishmen but the moment
was not without its satisfaction even for the visitor. If West Indies
cricket is on the way back, good for them and good for game.
But the image of the West Indian players and people in celebration was utterly
captivating. It was like the good old bad old days when the West Indian fast
men terrorised the world.
Many will wonder how a match that for three days had a tempo more in keeping
with a requiem than reggae could suddenly erupt into life.
But we have been here before with this ground. Scoring is often funereal but
every Test at Sabina since the infamous abandonment in 1998 has produced a
positive result, sometimes from the unlikeliest of positions. West Indies
collapsing to 47 all out five years ago was only one such instance. So what
happened yesterday should not have come as a surprise.
Andy Flower, now the acting England coach, will recall what happened to
Zimbabwe here in 2000, when Zimbabwe were a decent Test match team and he
was captain. A slow scoring game meandered into the fourth day with West
Indies taking a small lead. Then, out of a clear blue sky, Zimbabwe crashed
to 102 all out in the third innings, admittedly to an attack spearheaded by
Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose. Zimbabwe ended up losing with almost a
day to spare.
England faced a similar ambush yesterday, only while Flower was thinking back
to Sabina Park 2000, the nightmare the players were revisiting was Adelaide
2006, when they died on their feet in the third innings of the game.
Yesterday, having been reasonably satisfied to restrict West Indies to a
lead of 74, England began with their minds bent on survival.
And, boy, did it show.
Too many of this England team have not progressed in recent times.
Cook and Bell are two. Cook is without a century in 23 innings, although
during that time he has scored eight fifties, and Bell without one in 12.
Since his career-best 199 at Lord’s last summer, Bell has scored a paltry
214 runs. He is a man being indulged and must be dropped for Owais Shah
ahead of Friday’s second Test. The way both men fell suggests the West
Indians have adopted a cute strategy, playing on England’s superiority
complex.
After Pietersen’s departure, Strauss and Collingwood hung on grimly against
pace from one end and spin from the other. But they were going nowhere. No
runs, no initiative, just grim survival. And it was making the West Indians
more confident with every passing minute.
Chris Gayle kept Taylor on. For ten overs nothing seemed to be happening, but
the pressure was building on the England pair, and eventually Taylor was
rewarded when Strauss feathered an outside edge.
Then, in Taylor’s next over, Collingwood was bowled leg stump, via an inside
edge so thin that Collingwood thought the ball had raced off to fine leg for
runs. It was only when the jubilant fielders pointed out what had happened
that Collingwood had to accept what had happened and trudged off.
Taylor was not finished. In the same over he rolled his hands over a delivery
to breach Matt Prior’s defence and send off stump cartwheeling.
England were reeling at 23 for six, which moments later became 26 for seven
when Stuart Broad stabbed a catch to short leg. Incredibly, England were
still three short of the world Test record low score and 22 away from their
lowest ever Test total made in Sydney in 1887. So much for Andrew Strauss’s
call for England to take the upper hand from the outset of the series.
Andrew Flintoff, enjoying a good deal of luck, settled down to scratch
together a stand of 24 with Ryan Sidebottom that raised England’s fifty but
by this stage England’s long unbeaten run against West Indies was all but
over. Flintoff hit the only three boundaries of the innings, the first off
an edge, the other two more authentic hits down the ground off Benn, but
then came the final indignity as three wickets fell in as many overs.
Sidebottom’s appeal against an lbw decision was a fittingly absurd way to end
the referral process in the game. Umpire Rudi Koertzen’s judgement was
accurate enough. Flintoff was bowled slogging and Steve Harmison aimed a
clueless sweep against Benn, a shot he always plays when he starts his
innings against spin, with consistently abject results.
England’s strategy coming into the game was always fraught with problems. The
brittleness of their batting is only one issue. There were question-marks of
one kind and another hanging over all of their bowlers and for more than 155
overs Strauss was left shuffling his hand like an out-of-luck gambler.
Strauss said that he intended to use Flintoff as strike rather than stock
bowler. We have heard that before. Suffice to say, Strauss’s intended
lightning bolt turned into a 24/7 energy saving bulb, on most of the time.
Flintoff bowled the two longest spells of any of the quick men (seven overs
on Friday, six yesterday) and the most overs in total (33 for a return of
two for 72).
He deserved better but for once the pickings were dominated by Broad, whose
two victims in his opening spell gave him his first five-for in his eleventh
Test. Broad was an inevitable selection here as the lack of movement through
the air, even in these humid conditions, precluded the selection of two
swing bowlers, but previously the knack of taking wickets in Tests had
eluded him.
Here he stuck to an intelligent line across the off stump of the left- handers
and was rewarded with the wickets of Benn and the stubborn Brendan Nash, who
ground out a four-and-a-half-hour 55, to add to the more illustrious pair of
left-handers he had accounted for the previous day in Gayle and Shivnarine
Chanderpaul. With Harmison subsequently removing Daren Powell - to another
controversial decision that should have been overturned but was not - West
Indies were all out just over an hour into the day for 392.
Broad, 22, is still learning to cope with the physical demands of
international cricket, hence his mature decision to stay away from the IPL,
but he is a cricketer of immense promise who can serve England well for many
years to come. Quite what an England team of the future with him in it will
look like is hard to tell, because a few of the present generation are
looking vulnerable.
If England thought West Indies would fold as spinelessly as they did here five
years ago, they were sorely disabused. There was no Calypso collapso, unless
one counts two wickets falling to Broad in one over.
On the contrary, the new spirit of defiance in Gayle’s team saw wickets sold
at a premium.
In the present decade, the only time West Indies had batted longer against
England than they did here was when Brian Lara made his record score in
Antigua in 2004.
Three hours of havoc: How the England batsmen were blown away
11.32am 1-1 Alastair Cook c DS Smith b Taylor 0
An excellent probing delivery by Taylor tempts Cook to drive. The edge is
taken at the second attempt by Devon Smith at second slip
11.59am 11-2 Ian Bell c Ramdin b Benn 4
With lunch only two balls away, Bell attempts to cut a ball from the tall
spinner that is too close to his off stump. The ball takes an inside edge to
Ramdin
12.43pm 12-3 Kevin Pietersen b Taylor 1
An exceptional delivery – a full, fast, outswinger that Pietersen tries to
flick off his legs but is yorked
1.10pm 20-4 Andrew Strauss c Ramdin b Taylor 9
Strauss takes a chance and it backfires spectacularly as, with the thinnest of
edges, the ball flies through to Ramdin
1.19pm 23-5 Paul Collingwood b Taylor 1
An inside edge clips the leg bail but unaware, Collingwood still runs. The bad
news is delivered by Andrew Flintoff, who points to the dislodged bail
1.24pm 23-6 Matt Prior b Taylor 0
A beautifully disguised slower off-cutter that pings through Prior’s gate
sends the off stump out of the ground
1.30pm 26-7 Stuart Broad c Marshall b Benn 0
Met with the full face of the bat, the ball is clipped directly to the hands
of Xavier Marshall at short leg
2.24pm 50-8 Ryan Sidebottom lbw b Benn 6
A fizzing Benn delivery pitches outside off stump and hits Sidebottom flush in
front. Up goes Rudi Koertzen’s finger and there is no change despite the use
of a referral
2.31pm 51-9 Andrew Flintoff b Edwards 24
After showing more resistance than anyone else, Flintoff has little option but
to go down attacking and is cleaned up attempting to smash Fidel Edwards
over mid-wicket
2.35pm 51 all out Steve Harmison b Benn 0
Harmison is bowled around his legs by Benn attempting to sweep, and the West
Indians are ecstatic as they celebrate a shock and destructive win
What they said
Andrew Strauss admitted his players were shell-shocked after losing so
disastrously.
“I am pretty angry with the way we’ve let ourselves down,” Strauss said. “The
way we’ve batted there is not good enough from an England team, we all
accept that. The dressing room is a pretty disconsolate place at the moment.
I don’t think anyone likes to see an England team go down in that fashion,
the players are all hurting pretty badly.
“Moving forward, if we can use that as motivation or inspiration to play
better, we will come out of it a better side. I do recognise that out of
these pretty tough times, good things can happen. We have a choice of
sticking together as a group of players and become closer as a result of
this and move forward. Or we don’t.”
West Indies skipper Chris Gayle said Jerome Taylor’s performance was “ the
best fast bowling I have seen for a long while and he set the game up for us
and we won it. This is what we have been talking about, getting the batting
and bowling combined together and we saw that in this game. It was just
tremendous.
“Hopefully we can continue this in the next Test. Sulieman Benn, with the
ball, was tremendous picking up eight wickets.”
