The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : England asserts superiority

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Friday, Jul 23, 2004

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Sport - Cricket

England asserts superiority

By Ted Corbett

LONDON, JULY 22. It's tea on the first day of the first Test, England is 233 for one so that a huge score looms, Andrew Strauss has just scored a second century in his first five Tests, the new No. 3 Robert Key is 90 in a stand of 204, and no wicket has fallen for three and a half hours.

There is a temptation to write that this four-match series is decided already and I, for one, cannot resist that temptation.

Chris Gayle, opening bat and off-spinner, has injured his right index finger and there is not a chink of light anywhere for West Indies, a dismal, down and mentally defeated team, which cannot have much hope of a draw.

Strauss has shown the cool that made him an assured success on his debut and Key the steadfast application, but not yet the pugnacity, that brought him close to 1,000 runs this May.

The 31 fours that have come in the first two sessions demonstrate England's superiority but not quite all West Indies' wretchedness. In other words England has picked up from where it left off in the Caribbean and against New Zealand and shrugged off the disasters of the one-day tournament.

Brian Lara won the toss and asked England to bat; but, for all the murmurs that there might be help in the pitch, it seemed more likely that he wanted to protect his batsmen from the vagaries of a Lord's wicket at 10.30 in the morning. Whatever England scores, he must have thought, we can get close if we have the best of the pitch, on the third day.

Lara might have reduced England to tatters too except for one simple fact. His bowlers were terrible.

In the first session when West Indies desperately needed a breakthrough not just for this match but to wipe out the effects of its 3-0 drubbing in the Caribbean in March and April, Tino Best's raw pace brought Marcus Trescothick's wicket almost as much as Trescothick's dismissive shot but he dropped a caught and bowled off Trescothick and Gayle put down a difficult catch off Key on 16.

From that moment the ground fielding deteriorated until ones became twos and twos were turned into easy threes and team morale went through the tiny cracks in the pitch.

Part of the timidity of West Indies could be judged from its slow over-rate. Even in India in the bad old days of — for instance — the Keith Fletcher tour of 1980-1 there have rarely been as few overs bowled as 25 before lunch. West Indies needed two and a half hours to bowl 30 overs and at tea only 51 overs were bowled. Key, a stout yeoman of a batsman, played his first shot — after Trescothick went at 29 off six overs — with such stern application that we knew he intended to make this innings count as none of his other eight Test attempts, averaging 16, have done.

At the other end in their Lord's record century partnership, Strauss continued as he always does at Lord's.

He has a first- class century here for Middlesex this summer, a century and 83 in his first Test and 100 in the one-day triangular match against West Indies.

Five an over is a high rate in any Test and needs an explanation. Pedro Collins bowled his first few overs erratically, Best and Fidel Edwards both looked two years short of Test class and Dwayne Bravo's idea of defensive bowling was to pitch the ball two feet wide of off stump.

After lunch Omari Banks, an impressive young man, with decent skills as a batsman and an exponent of the "falling leaves" brand of off-spin adopted by Gayle particularly in one-day cricket, bowled four overs for 34 runs.

The three Ws — Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott — were the charismatic trio who made West Indies famous after World war II. If the three Bs — Best, Bravo and Banks — are to achieve the same level of expertise it will be too far in the future to allow us to hold our breath.

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