Wisden
Tour review

England v West Indies, 2012

Mike Selvey

Test matches (3): England 2, West Indies 0
One-day internationals (3): England 2, West Indies 0
Twenty20 international (1): England 1, West Indies 0


Marlon Samuels played another mature innings, England v West Indies, 2nd Test, Trent Bridge, 1st day, May 25, 2012
Marlon Samuels announced his return, averaging 96 in the three Tests © PA Photos
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Series/Tournaments: West Indies tour of England

Once upon a time, rather too long ago, the West Indians would roll into town with a swagger, and opponents would obligingly step aside. They had little choice. But if their arrival in England was familiar in one respect - this was their third visit for a Test tour in six summers - the swagger was understandably absent. The decline in their Test fortunes, previously the pride of the Caribbean - indeed the region's only corporate representation, with the possible exception of the University of the West Indies - had been palpable. And, while a testing early-season tour of England had its moments, they never lasted long enough to change the thrust of the narrative.

The side that arrived in May did so almost unnoticed. In fact, it was barely a side at all, for their strength had been plundered by the lure of the Indian Premier League. Absent from the Test series was a string of players, most notably Chris Gayle - still at odds with the West Indies Cricket Board, despite rumours that the stand-off was being sorted out - and all-rounder Dwayne Bravo. The diamond-studded travellers, Gayle included, were back for the limited-overs games that followed the three Tests, but their effect hardly proved dynamic: West Indies did not win an international match in any format.

During the Tests they were outplayed by a much better side, with England captain Andrew Strauss casting aside doubts about his batting - at least until they resurfaced against South Africa - by making hundreds at Lord's, for which he received a memorably affectionate standing ovation, and Trent Bridge. The West Indians, under the virtuous leadership of Darren Sammy, at least gave a spirited account of themselves, which in itself exceeded expectation. It was just that their overall efforts tended to be capsized by the occasional catastrophic session.

Hopes were higher for the one-day internationals and especially the single Twenty20 game, the format best suited to their personnel. But the fizz went flat, and West Indies' only success of the tour came when they thrashed Middlesex in a 50-over warm-up at Lord's. And instead of being fortified by the return of the IPL stars, as he should have been, Sammy seemed to lose some of his authority.

It was a lazy finish to a trip that had hinted at steady improvement, and it allowed England to shrug off the loss of Kevin Pietersen, whose retirement - later rescinded - from international limited-overs cricket would spark an unedifying chain of events. In the one-day internationals, as in the Tests, they ran out comfortable winners, with Ian Bell, promoted to open with Alastair repeating the dose in the second.

Throughout, however, it was West Indies who faced the greater off-field issues. The impasse between Gayle and the WICB had been the most unwelcome of distractions, disrupting the efforts of coach Ottis Gibson to develop a team in the truest sense of the word, and apparently based on a petty squabble rooted in semantics: two bald men fighting over a comb, as someone put it. The intransigence of the WICB, and Gayle's occasional faux bemusement, did neither credit. So while Gayle roamed the world, hitting sixes for large sums of money, he became a political football back in the Caribbean. His return to the side was worked out only after the involvement of the premiers of St Vincent, Antigua & Barbuda, and Jamaica, his home country.

All the while, criticism was heaped on Gibson, in particular by a number of West Indian greats, including Sir Vivian Richards and Michael Holding. They discerned a blinkered management style that excluded players Gibson regarded as not fully committed to his personal vision. So the experienced batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan, who had enjoyed such a successful series against England in the Caribbean in early 2009, spent the summer playing for Leicestershire; and the claims of Jerome Taylor, whose legendary bowling spell at Sabina Park in that same series had paradoxically been the catalyst for the renaissance of England rather than West Indies, and who was available again after a lengthy spell of injury, were ignored. Neither, it was argued by Gibson, had demonstrated sufficient commitment to replace more dedicated, if less experienced players - and almost certainly less talented ones.

Preparation for the First Test, in matches against Sussex and the England Lions, was scarcely a success. Hampered by appalling weather, West Indies were restricted to 34 overs in three days at Hove. That was followed by the embarrassment of a ten-wicket defeat by the Lions at Northampton, where the promise of Kieran Powell's century was offset by hundreds from James Taylor and, in an unbroken opening stand of 197, Joe Root. With weather conditions expected to suit England's band of seamers, West Indies were given little hope of providing more than token resistance in the Tests.

It was a careless assumption, for at times they played challenging cricket. But they were desperately hampered by the struggles of the top four: Adrian Barath, Powell, Kirk Edwards (who endured a torrid time, was ill during the second innings at Trent Bridge, and dropped for the final Test at Edgbaston), and - most disappointingly of all - Darren Bravo, Dwayne's half-brother.

On the credit side came predictable resistance from Shivnarine Chanderpaul (or "Chanderwall", as he had become known over the years, after so many hours playing a lone hand of resistance). Twice at Lord's he held the line, although he too was absent from the Third Test, for reasons largely unexplained but with speculation ranging from injury to matters of discipline. Despite his runs - he had recently passed 10,000 in Tests - Chanderpaul was no favourite of Gibson's. In the Second Test, Sammy went a considerable way to answering those who doubted his credentials by surviving a nervy spell late in his innings to register a maiden Test hundred, a vibrant affair full of long-levered strokes.

Kemar Roach put the wind up England with some searing pace: had there been another hour's play on the penultimate evening at Lord's, when the ball moved sharply and he had the top order on the rack, there might have been a different result. Roach, unfortunately, was not to last the series because of a shin injury, and neither was the promisingly threatening fast bowler Shannon Gabriel, who made his debut at Lord's but soon flew home because of back spasms.

If Gabriel had not broken down, however, the series would have been deprived of one of its most memorable passages of play. At Edgbaston, a match in which England rested James Anderson and Stuart Broad - to their evident chagrin - and brought in Steven Finn and Graham Onions, Gabriel's own replacement, Tino Best, battered his way to 95, the highest score by a No. 11 in Test history. He and the wicketkeeper, Denesh Ramdin, added 143 for the last wicket, just eight shy of the Test record, with Ramdin celebrating his second Test century in controversial fashion by holding up a sheet of paper on which he had written a colloquial retort to perceived criticism from Viv Richards both before and during the series. This show of impertinence - bordering on lese-majesty, given Richards's status in the Caribbean - would cost him 20% of his match fee. But at least it showed he cared.


Darren Sammy cuts during his career-best score, England v West Indies, 2nd Test, Trent Bridge, 1st day, May 25, 2012
Darren Sammy got his maiden Test hundred at Trent Bridge © Getty Images
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The Third Test also saw the first appearance of Sunil Narine, supposedly a mystery spinner, who had been bamboozling batsmen in the IPL, but singularly failed to make any impact here: across the three formats, he managed one wicket for 199.

The surprise success was Marlon Samuels, whose Test career stretched back to December 2000 and included a two-year ban for alleged misdemeanours in connection with subcontinental bookmakers - charges he denied. What was certain was that this maverick batsman had always fallen short of the level his talent demanded. Now, that changed. At Lord's he made 31 and 86. Then, at Trent Bridge, he scored 117 - his third Test hundred and first for four years, adding 204 for the seventh wicket with Sammy - and an unbeaten 76 out of 165 all out. He batted nearly ten hours in the match, allying the sort of attention span that had previously eluded him with all his customary style. Finally, at rain-sodden Edgbaston, he made another 76. With 386 runs from five innings at an average of 96, there was no question about West Indies' Man of the Series.

Despite losing the Tests 2-0, they could draw considerable encouragement which they were able to carry over into a home series against New Zealand. But their performance in the one-day games was dismal: the two matches that survived the weather were lost by 114 runs and eight wickets. Gayle's differences with the WICB had by then been settled, so he joined the squad, only to miss the first match, at the Rose Bowl, through injury. And of the others returning from their IPL commitments, only Dwayne Bravo had any positive impact on a team that now appeared less close-knit than before.

In the face of this, Sammy - who expected and deserved better - shrank back. There appeared, from the periphery, to be a them-and-us situation. Only in the Twenty20 international, at Trent Bridge, did the West Indians compete, and even then they were undone by an extraordinary batting display from the young Nottinghamshire opener Alex Hales, whose 99 was the highest by an England batsman in the format. That innings alone may have been symptomatic of the difference between the sides: somehow, England always found a way. For all their progress, West Indies were evidently still finding theirs.

Match reports for

Tour Match: Sussex v West Indians at Hove, May 5-7, 2012
Report | Scorecard

Tour Match: England Lions v West Indians at Northampton, May 10-13, 2012
Report | Scorecard

1st Test: England v West Indies at Lord's, May 17-21, 2012
Report | Scorecard

2nd Test: England v West Indies at Nottingham, May 25-28, 2012
Report | Scorecard

Tour Match: Leicestershire v West Indians at Leicester, Jun 2-3, 2012
Report | Scorecard

3rd Test: England v West Indies at Birmingham, Jun 7-11, 2012
Report | Scorecard

Tour Match: Middlesex v West Indians at Lord's, Jun 13, 2012
Report | Scorecard

1st ODI: England v West Indies at Southampton, Jun 16, 2012
Report | Scorecard

2nd ODI: England v West Indies at The Oval, Jun 19, 2012
Report | Scorecard

3rd ODI: England v West Indies at Leeds, Jun 22, 2012
Report | Scorecard

Only T20I: England v West Indies at Nottingham, Jun 24, 2012
Report | Scorecard

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