38th over: West Indies 133-6 (Dowrich 30, Holder 9) Ben Stokes starts at the other end. He takes a few balls to get his radar right but ends the over with an excellent lifter that beats Holder.
“Hard as it is to disagree with Gary Naylor, I think it’s necessary,” says Geoff Wignall. “Buttler and/ or Curran have had to rescue the batting rather too often recently, decent opening stands have been too few and far between even when respectable totals have been posted and without the Earl of Burnley the bowling would be too frequently unconvincing to go along with his theory. It’s still about individual performance, albeit it does seem a very well knit team. (Am I alone in thinking the sense of team unity and common purpose, as well as Root’s onfield decision making has been on an upward curve since Buttler returned?)”
I completely agree on that last point. I think the return of Buttler, an unashamed Morganite, was a pivotal moment in the development of this team, particularly the conviction in their approach.
37th over: West Indies 131-6 (Dowrich 29, Holder 9) Shane Dowrich and Jason Holder get West Indies off to a good start, milking four singles from James Anderson’s first over. I suspect they will want to increase the lead to 400 as quickly as possible.
“My boyfriend and I are off to Antigua next week,” boasts Emma Leonard, “and we want something to read on the way. Any new cricket books you’d recommend?”
I really enjoyed Derek Pringle’s book about cricket in the 1980s, and our own Geoff Lemon’s ‘Steve Smith’s Men’ is quite superb. I’ve also heard very good things about Monty Panesar’s autobiography, though I don’t know whether that’s been published yet.
Mike Atherton is interviewing Shimron Hetmyer on Sky Sports. He seems a thoroughly charming, happy and self-deprecating young bloke, and we already know he is spectacularly talented. We are going to seriously enjoy him over the next 15 years.
This is an interesting point from Our Gary
“It’s often said that cricket is an individual sport played within a team environment – indeed, that’s one of its principal delights,” says Gary Naylor. “Can it be entirely coincidental that Joe Root’s England team – one of the most ‘together’ in England’s history, maybe in Test cricket’s history – tend to succeed and fail collectively, as if a hive mind operates positively and negatively? I can provide no psychological explanation for such conjecture, but it’s happening too often to be explained away by simple coincidence.”
I’d like to think about that one. It’s a persuasive point but I’m not totally sure I agree.
Preamble
Oh, England. There’s your preamble!
At least it would be, had I not just spotted The Man lovingly polishing his knuckle duster. So, here’s your preamble.
We’re all friends here, so let us speak frankly: England have had a stinker for the ages in Barbados. Rare is the shambles that starts before a ball is bowled, but that’s what happened here with England’s confused and possibly hubristic selection. They sent the fiascometer into overdrive with yesterday’s malodorous and slightly surreal collapse to 77 all out. Even allowing for England’s inherent collapsibility, I’m struggling to make sense of that one.
West Indies will resume on 129 for six in their second innings, a lead of 339 on a whimsical pitch that looks flat at times and deadly at others. There is a 0.64 per cent chance England will pull of a famous victory at some stage tomorrow; the likelier scenario is that this match will be over – effectively, if not actually – by the close of play today.
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