Rain, No Play

Stuart Clarke (4/22) and Brett Lee (2/56) have removed the Windies' middle order to leave the home team limping at 117/6 at lunch. Denesh Ramdin (22*) and Darren Sammy (13*) are the not out batsmen. With the West Indies needing another 170 runs with only 4 wickets in hand, barring a near-miracle, Australia are on the way to winning the first Test.

UPDATE: The Windies went down to defeat by 95 runs, having been bowled out for 191.

The Windies will need 287 runs in their fourth innings to defeat Australia in the first Test at Kingston. A counter-attacking 79 from Andrew Symonds was the only thing that kept the Windies from having a more modest total to chase as only Brad Hodge(27) and Brad Haddin (23) managed to get into double digits. The day started promisingly enough when Daren Powell removed night watchman Mitchell Johnson in the day's first over. However, that brought Symonds to the crease and he and Hodge, with a 52 run partnership, and then he and Haddin, with a 74 run partnership, rebuilt Australia's innings.

However with the fall of Haddin at 144-7, the Windies were able to quickly wrap up the Aussie tail, taking the last 4 wickets for 23 as the men from down under fell for 167. Full credit goes to the pace of Powell and Fidel Edwards who both finished with 3 wickets, but it was Dwayne Bravo who got the key wickets of Hodge, Symonds and Haddin. Bravo bowled with nice control and kept the batsmen from scoring too quickly and was rewarded for his efforts with figures of 4-47. The one kink in the bowling attack today was debutante Amit Jaggernauth, who Symonds in particular punished for 22 runs from his 3 overs. Rain, No Play hopes the selectors continue with him and not discard him, as spinners typically take a little while to settle into Test cricket.

The target is 287. The bad news for the West Indies is that no team has made as much as 287 in the fourth innings at Sabina and won the match. Besides the 480/5 the Windies made in their first ever match at Sabina in 1930 in a tame draw, the highest they have made in the 4th innings is 258/9 in 1978. Worse still is the fact that the Windies were chasing 280 in 2005 against Pakistan and were bowled out for 143 and in 2006 they chased 269 against India and were bowled out for 219. You can see the list of 4th innings results at Sabina here.

Is 287 gettable? I think it is. It probably is about 40 or 50 runs more than I would have hoped for, but I think it is definitely gettable. A lot rests on the senior batsmen in the side, namely Chanderpaul, Sarwan and Bravo.

UPDATE: At stumps the Windies are 46/1 with Parchment falling for 15. The Windies will need 241 tomorrow with 9 wickets in hand. But for rain, we'll have a result tomorrow. The question is - can the Windies knock off these runs?

Two weeks ago, Rain, No Play received an email about a post on Cricket Buzz that they had done listing the top 50 Cricket Blogs on the web. They had Rain, No Play listed at 19. We haven't had the frequency of posts as we would like - guest bloggers anyone? And we definitely know a couple blogs that we would would include in any list of top 50 cricket blogs that we don't see on Cricket Buzz's list (like Ryan's) but top 20 is pretty high praise. What say you?

CORRECTION: As noted in the comments, Ryan's site is mentioned there after all at #7.

The Windies shocked the visiting Aussies late in the day by taking 4 quick wickets to leave the Aussies reeling at 17/4 in their second innings. Earlier the Windies had battled to 312 due largely to a fantastic 118 by Shivnarine Chanderpaul a half century from Runako Morton 67 and a dashing 46 from Dwayne Bravo. Chanderpaul's innings provided the impetus for the fightback as he was hit on the back of his helmet by a Brett Lee bouncer, seemingly knocked out cold, only to get back up again and notch his 18th Test century.

Facing a deficit of 119 runs on first innings, Fidel Edwards and Daren Powell bowled with accurate pace and controlled aggression to slice off the Aussies' top order. Phil Jacques might as well been Failure Jacques today as Edwards had him caught behind for 4 following his first innings score of 9. Powell then took the big wicket of the captain Ricky Ponting when Ponting pushed uncertainly forward and gave a catch to the slips at 10-2. It was soon 12-3 when Simon Katich was trapped plum by a fast delivery from Edwards. It soon got worse for the Aussies as Mike Hussey was clean bowled at 12-4 by an excellent Daren Powell delivery. Panic must have ran through the Aussie dressing room as they sent in a night watchman in Mitchell Johnson. When the umpires offered the light at 17-4 the Aussie batsmen gladly accepted the offer.  read more »

Chanderpaul scored yet another hundred today against Australia.

What can you say about Chanderpaul? Another battling hundred to save the Windies innings.

Of course these numbers will change, but with him on 104 n.o. in this match, he has now scored 927 runs for an average of 103 in 9 Test matches since the start of the England tour last year May. In that time span he has scored 4 centuries and 6 fifties.

Imagine that. Averaging over 100 for a one year time frame. Bradmanesque?

UPDATE: Chanderpaul was out for 118, mistiming a pull off a full toss. This drops his average for the period from May 17, 2007 (the start of the England tour) to now to 94.10.

Andrew Symond's 70 take Australia to 431 as Fidel Edwards shines with the ball, taking 5/104. Brenton Parchment struggles on debut, scoring 9 in 2 hours as Runako Morton and Shiv Chanderpaul look to rebuild the Windies innings after they lost two quick wickets to fall to 78/3.

A big hundred for Ricky Ponting. The Windies struggle in the field with only Fidel Edwards consistently troubling the batsmen. With Jerome Taylor unable to play due to injury, the bowling makeup of only two fast bowlers in Daren Powell and Edwards shows its inability to take consistent wickets as the Aussies methodically build a big total. Medium pacers Dwayne Bravo and Darren Sammy as well as debutante offspinner Amit Jaggernauth round out the bowling options. Powell however struggled to be effective, putting more pressure on the other bowlers. Jaggernaut showed promise for his first Test even though he only got one wicket. That was a beauty of a catch that Parchment took to displace Ponting.