Michael Vaughan leads his team off the field victorious.
[Photo courtesy of Jon Hall]
One thing that can never be said about West Indies cricket is, "It can't get any worse than this!".
Today it got about as bad as it possibly could for the Windies as they caved to a massive innings and 283 runs defeat - the biggest defeat in the 79 year history of West Indies Test cricket. After following on a full 424 runs behind England's big first innings total of 570/7, the West Indies put on an even more pitiful performance than their first innings total of 146. This time they folded for 141.
Resuming on the overnight score of 22/2, still needing another 402 runs to make England bat again, the Windies' batsmen lacked the application necessary to play the moving ball. In what has been described as the coldest day of Test cricket in England, with a morning temperature of 7 degrees centigrade, Ryan Sidebottom was again the destroyer for England. The morning got off to a bad start for the Windies as Gayle got a good delivery from Liam Plunkett which angling across the left hander's offstump induced an uncertain edge from Gayle. When Sidebottom took Devon Smith's and Sylvester Joseph's wickets to leave the Windies at 57/5, the match was all but over.
Dwayne Bravo gave this West Indies fan something to cheer about.
[Photo credit: Jon Hall]
An enterprising 6th wicket stand of 63 between Runako Morton (25) and Dwayne Bravo (52) gave some semblance of decency to the total, but even that mini-resistance ended when Morton foolishly and unnecessarily pulled a short ball from Steve Harmison only to top edge it.
The stunning capitulation by the West Indies masked an otherwise ordinary bowling performance by the English men, as Harmison and Plunkett sprayed the ball all over the place. Even with that being the case, there is clearly a wide gulf between the two teams as England in the two Tests have scored a total of 1407 runs for a loss of 20 wickets, while the Windies have only managed 813 runs while surrendering 28 wickets. England's batsmen have gorged themselves on the largely ineffective Windies bowling, ticking off 7 centuries, including a double by Kevin Pietersen, while no West Indies batsman has managed a score above 75.
With Ronnie Sarwan possibly out for the rest of the tour and Shivnarine Chanderpaul's status uncertain, long suffering Windies' fans may have to expect more of the same from their team.
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