I have been snowed under with work and home life, and a dog with an attitude, so blogging has been sparse in the past few days.
I was driving up to Liverpool on Friday when the news broke of the disastrous goings on in North Sound for the aborted second test. It is a crying shame that the West Indies, on the back of a resounding test victory at Kingston were then cast as muppets by a board as incompetent as the Keystone Cops. The players can rightly look askance at the powers that be who turned a proud team, celebrating a victory as comprehensive as they’ve inflicted in recent years, into a cricket nation who care little for doing the proper thing. It is all too easy for us, with six established test grounds and at least three more chomping at the bit to get in the regular rotation, to poke fun at a new stadium, when in my opinion the ramshackle dump of Old Trafford is no credit to us, but to allow an outfield to be in such a state for a test is a joke. What were they thinking of? Not their players….
And so to the Antigua Recreation Ground, the bane of bowlers lives in past incarnation. Horror stories of the sort of park pitches my cricket club spent much of their wandering lives playing on were prevalent. It could be 100 plays 100 plays 100 plays whoever is last man standing. It could be anything. What the pitch has turned out to be has been more reminiscent of the tracks of yore at St. John’s with England racking up 566/9 declared, rather than a terror filled monster.
Andrew Strauss, with a little good fortune all players need, played impressively and fluently for 169, but still got out a couple of overs before the end of the day’s play, so leaving with my statistic that as an opening batsman he has never started and finished a full day’s play. But to moan about 169, which does not fall foul of my other phobia, small tons, would be churlish. It was much more positive than anything I’ve seen from him in an age, and to do it as captain was vital. Good on the chap!
Cook scored another 50, and got out, albeit to a pretty good catch by Devon Smith. Owais Shah looked very good (good riddance Bell) until he got near 50, and then once passed the milestone, had a hair-brained moment and ran himself out. I did not get to see much of KP’s knock, but 50s are routine to him, Flintoff at 7 got a bad ball early on, but the lower-middle order were solid and escorted Collingwood to another test hundred.
England then took the ten wickets in the first innings in a touch under a full day’s overs, and giving them a lead of 291. Graeme Swann took his chance with five wickets on a pitch likely to give him even more help. Monty Panesar may be rueing being dropped, but the question between Monty and Swann is which one is more likely to take wickets on unhelpful pitches rather than spitting cobras, which this one could be. I’d prefer Monty on a helpful surface any day of the week, but on those not assisting, Swann is going to be straight up and down, and Monty is just cannon fodder. Maybe it was the perceived need for extra runs from Swann that swung it – runs not needed as it turned out.
England are batting now at 31/1 on the start of day 4, and I am probably glad that I’m not at home with Botham crying out for a declaration an hour before lunch and with England 350 in front. That’s the most annoying commentary of the lot.
More on this test as and when…. One thing though. If we are chasing quick second innings runs, why send in a night watchman?
