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Tuesday, February 25, 2025

From despair to glory:

West Indies’ remarkable

comeback against Pakistan

by

Colin Murray
25 days ago
20250130

First­ly, a toast to the West In­dies on their su­perb vic­to­ry against Pak­istan in three days by 117 runs. I nev­er saw that com­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter their dis­play in the first Test match where the bat­ting left much to be de­sired.

They say light­ning doesn’t strike twice but I must ad­mit, light­ning has struck twice here, with the on­ly dif­fer­ence be­ing it did not strike in the same place. Let us look at some star­tling sta­tis­tics, as this West In­dies team seems to leave their best per­for­mances for Jan­u­ary.

I am cer­tain that most, if not all of you, must re­mem­ber Jan­u­ary 2024 when the West In­dies toured Aus­tralia for a two-match Test se­ries. They were hum­bled by ten wick­ets in the first Test match with scores of 188 and 120 and even though the bowlers fought back to dis­miss the Aussies for 283, the 120 made in the sec­ond in­nings was sim­ply in­ad­e­quate and the home team won com­fort­ably with­in three days.

In the sec­ond Test, when no one, in­clud­ing yours tru­ly, gave them much of a chance, they de­fied the odds and de­feat­ed the pow­er­ful Aussies by eight runs, thanks to the in­spi­ra­tion and hero­ics of Shamar Joseph who grabbed 7 for 68 in the sec­ond in­nings. As I sug­gest­ed ear­li­er, light­ning doesn’t strike twice in the same place but lis­ten to the sim­i­lar­i­ties, as the par­al­lels are strik­ing, al­most eerie.

The first Test vs the Aussies was from Jan­u­ary 17-19, 2024. The first Test vs Pak­istan was from Jan­u­ary 17-19, 2025. West In­dies lost on those dates to both Aus­tralia and Pak­istan. The sec­ond Test vs Aus­tralia was played from Jan­u­ary 25-29, 2024. The sec­ond Test against Pak­istan was played from Jan­u­ary 25-27, 2025. It’s like a re­cur­ring dream, a “Ground­hog Day” of crick­et­ing déjà vu. What an in­ter­est­ing co­in­ci­dence that the West In­dies save their best per­for­mances when the chips are down, their backs are against the wall and they have some­thing to prove. Or is it as sug­gest­ed they per­form bet­ter in the lat­ter half of Jan­u­ary?

Both of those wins ver­sus Aus­tralia and Pak­istan were re­mark­able but, why do they wait for all and sundry to write them off and they then turn it on to beat Aus­tralia (on a pitch suit­ed for their fast bowlers) and now against Pak­istan (on a pitch es­pe­cial­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed to favour the home team spin­ners from ball one) who they beat at their own game. But let’s not get car­ried away. While these vic­to­ries are com­mend­able, let’s not de­clare “mis­sion ac­com­plished” just yet. As the adage goes, “One swal­low does not a sum­mer make”, and one gut­sy win does not a crick­et­ing re­nais­sance her­ald. As an­oth­er say­ing sug­gests, “Don’t count your chick­ens be­fore they hatch,” and the West In­dies tend to flat­ter to de­ceive.

Speak­ing of chick­ens, let’s dis­cuss that pitch. Now let me make it clear, I have no prob­lem with a team want­i­ng to use their home ad­van­tage; they should use the pitch to their ben­e­fit. All home teams try to pre­pare their pitch­es to suit their bowl­ing at­tack and if the at­tack is spin-heavy, the grounds per­son­nel usu­al­ly pre­pare a pitch that plays rea­son­ably well for the first three days but as the game goes on, by the fourth day, the wear and tear of the pitch caus­es it to turn more and then the spin­ners come in­to their own.

When a lit­tle grass and mois­ture is left on the pitch, it is gen­er­al­ly be­cause the home team is loaded with tal­ent­ed fast bowlers but again, it can back­fire. If the home team los­es the toss and is sent in, the grass and ear­ly morn­ing mois­ture have to be ne­go­ti­at­ed by the home bats­men. Nor­mal­ly, cu­ra­tors around the world try to pre­pare a pitch that is well bal­anced, good for bat­ting where bats­men can play their shots, and as the crick­et­ing say­ing goes, bowlers who bend their backs will get some­thing from the pitch. At the end of the day, it is al­ways go­ing to be ad­van­ta­geous for the home team, but not an un­fair ad­van­tage.

While the home ad­van­tage is un­der­stand­able, ma­nip­u­lat­ing the pitch to such an ex­tent to set the pitch to favour their spin­ners from ball one, is sim­ply not crick­et. Pak­istan’s at­tempt to cre­ate a spin­ner’s par­adise was less a sport­ing strat­e­gy and more a farce. The ICC needs to clamp down on un­fair pitch prepa­ra­tion that spoils the essence of the game. They need to step in and en­force some stan­dards, lest Test crick­et de­volves in­to a se­ries of far­ci­cal home-ground cir­cus­es. What are the match ref­er­ees there for, are they mere­ly or­na­men­tal? I would hope they re­port the Pak­istan pitch as be­ing un­pre­pared and spoil­ing Test crick­et for purists the world over.

What Pak­istan did back­fired on them and I am ex­treme­ly hap­py about that, not on­ly be­cause West In­dies de­feat­ed them at their own tricks, but it goes to show the depths some na­tions go to win a Test match se­ries. Pak­istan did not cater for the bowlers who al­so turned bats­men. Ku­dos must go ini­tial­ly to Gu­dakesh Motie (num­ber 9), Jomel War­ri­can (num­ber 10) and Jay­den Seales (num­ber 11), from tak­ing the score from 66 for 8 in the first Test to a some­what re­spectable 137 in the cir­cum­stances.

In the sec­ond Test, 9, 10, and 11 (Motie, Roach and War­ri­can) took the score from a dis­as­trous 54 for 8 to an in­cred­i­ble 163 all out to even­tu­al­ly give the West In­dies a lead of nine runs af­ter the first in­nings. For the sec­ond game in a row, the low­er or­der had to pro­vide a record-break­ing in­nings to res­cue the team from the depths of de­spair, prov­ing that some­times, the tail wags the dog.

The bowlers dis­missed Pak­istan on their spin­ning pitch with War­ri­can and Motie scalp­ing sev­en wick­ets in the first in­nings and Kevin Sin­clair join­ing the spin­ning par­ty in the sec­ond in­nings, with all 10 wick­ets tak­en by the three spin­ners. I have said all along that West In­dies bowlers are do­ing a fine job, be it pace or spin. The prob­lem has been a lack of con­sis­ten­cy from the bats­men. It showed up in the first in­nings of the sec­ond Test with the team hav­ing to be saved from to­tal hu­mil­i­a­tion by the hero­ics of Motie’s half-cen­tu­ry and Roach and War­ri­can. It was pleas­ing in the sec­ond in­nings to see some of the bats­men putting up a fight.

Fi­nal­ly, skip­per Brath­waite came good, but he has to do this nine out of 10 times as he has played 98 Test match­es. He needs to lead and show the way go­ing for­ward with the bat. I was pleased for Amir Jan­goo, whom I think has a re­al fu­ture in in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et if he works hard. So, con­grat­u­la­tions to the West In­dies on a hard-fought se­ries draw. It was a vic­to­ry against the odds, a tri­umph of spir­it over spin. But let’s not get car­ried away. Just like when the West In­dies shocked Aus­tralia and things took a down­ward spi­ral af­ter that, it must not be al­lowed to hap­pen again. There is a lot of work to be done and don’t for one minute think the West In­dies have “turned the cor­ner” as they are a long way off but a vic­to­ry in test­ing con­di­tions was a tremen­dous feat. Con­grats again on com­ing from be­hind to tie the se­ries but once again, while the big boys play five Tests, the min­nows play two. Shame on you, ICC!


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