The rain returned to claim a third day's play as the third final test of the series ended in a draw. After the first two days were washed out, days three and four offered an insight to what might have been had the West Indies fielded a full strength team bereft of IPL commitments and contractual issues.
The West Indies made their highest score of the series scoring 426. The one constant the West Indies have had is Marlon Samuels. With an average of 96.50 and 386 runs in the series, he was easily the West Indies best batsman. He has finally reached the potential everyone spoke about and let's hope he continues to deliver.
Tino Best made the highest test score ever by a number 11 and was unlucky to be caught on 95 off 112 balls when he so deserved 100. At least he gave the crowd who paid £63 for a ticket for the Saturday something to cheer about. With 14 fours and 1 six, someone might have been telling Tino to mind those windows with good reason this time round.
The one blip on the West Indies batting performance was Dinesh Ramdin's celebration on reaching his century. As he got to 100 he retrieved a piece of paper from his pocket saying "Yeah Viv, talk nah." Whatever his gripe with Sir Vivian Richards, one of the West Indies' greatest batsman of all time, that wasn't the way to deal with it. Ramdin has subsequently been fined 20% of his match fee.
England fielded a weakened pace attack with both James Anderson and Stuart Broad being rested, much to the disappointment of the bowlers in question. Many a team would welcome Graham Onions and Steven Finn as their reserve bowlers.
It was great to see Onions back in an England shirt two years after a serious back injury jeopardised his career. Personally, I would have opened the bowling with Onions and Finn and brought Tim Bresnan on first change. Four wickets for Onions and three for Finn showed a decent performance but Anderson and Broad can sleep easy at night knowing they are England's number one bowling duo. Anderson was missed in the slips too with Ian Bell dropping two catches.
England won the series 2-0 and outplayed the West Indies for most of the series. It would have been interesting to see how this test match would have panned out had we not lost any time to rain. I think the West Indies would have put up more of a fight. Add a Chris Gayle or Ramesh Sarwan to the squad and who knows what might have been?
On to the one-day series on Saturday with a returning Chris Gayle; and missing, a retired from ODIs, Kevin Pietersen.
No comments:
Post a Comment