Rain, No Play

At lunch, in chase of the record 475 needed for victory, the Windies were 316/5, still 159 runs away, and having lost the wickets of Bravo and Chanderpaul. After it appeared that Chanderpaul and Bravo would have batted through to lunch, both fell in quick succession about 20 minutes from the interval. Chanderpaul and Bravo had taken the score to 303/3 with Bravo making an attacking 69. After taking 3 sixes off Beau Casson, Bravo however, went on the front foot and pushed a Casson delivery low into the hands of short cover. The next over, Stuart Clark had Chanderpaul lbw to a delivery that hit in line but was too high to hit the wicket. The umpire adjudged it close enough and gave Chanderpaul out for 50. Chanderpaul had crossed the 8,000 Test runs plateau during his innings.  read more »

The Windies closed the fourth days play of the Tgird and final Test in Bridgetown on 235/3 needing a further 240 runs to pull off what would be the greatest 4th innings run chase in history. However, with captain Chris Gayle, Xavier Marshall and Ramnaresh Sarwan back in the hut, and with Sewnarine Chattergoon limping on crutches, victory is at best a remote prospect.

Earlier in the day, Australia had piled up a mammoth 474 run lead after declaring at lunch on 439/5 with Simon Katich making 157 and Phil Jacques 108. Sulieman Benn was the leading bowler for the Windies, taking 3/154 off a mammoth 47 overs. After lunch, Marshall opened in place of the injured Chattergoon and with Gayle, put on 64 for the first wicket before Gayle got out playing a reckless cross batted pull shot. Marshall, who was dropped on 1, made the most of his reprieve and blasted a career best 85, surpassing his previous first-class best of 53, made in the previous Test. Sarwan (43) and Marshall put on 95 runs for the second wicket before Sarwan fell lbw to the offspin of Michael Clarke. Dwayne Bravo then joined Shiv Chanderpaul at the crease and the two have so far added 54 for the fourth wicket.

Bravo finally got some 'luck' as after being given out at least twice in the series to phantom catches as a batsman and also twice being denied wickets as a bowler due to umpiring errors, he was given not out after he apparently gloved a delivery from Brett Lee to the keeper. Lee almost had Bravo again when a yorker appeared to be plumb lbw, but the umpire turned down the appeal. Bravo made the most of his unexpected fortune and took on Lee in a classic confrontation between fast bowler and batsman that left the crowd oohing and ahhing. Lee, despite some excellent fast bowling to Bravo, was unable to dislodge him and when the Windies had piled up 235/3 at the end of the day's play, suddenly the unthinkable win in chasing 475 somehow seemed plausible. And with only 240 runs needed on the final day, barring rain, its either going to be an Aussie win or a Windies win. Batting out the day will almost certainly bring the 240 runs needed for victory.  read more »

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?

Chasing a target of 437 for victory, West Indies could only hope for a draw by the middle of the second session as the batsmen failed to make the most of a very good start to the day by Bravo and Sarwan. Resuming at 96/1, both batsmen acquitted themselves well in taking the score to 156 before Bravo was C&B by Muralitharan for 83.

At 156/2, Sarwan well set and Samuels, Chanderpaul and Gayle to come, a draw was very much still in the cards. West Indies failed to solidify their position, however, as wickets fell at regular intervals. Samuels was next to go - caught behind off Chaminda Vaas. And when Chanderpaul was beaten all over the place by a Vaas incutter, the prospect of a draw all but dissipated.  read more »

At stumps on Day four of the first test between West Indies and Sri Lanka, the home side continued the promise shown at the end of the previous day, leaving themselves with a fairly reasonable chance of securing a draw.

Resuming this morning in hopes of avoiding the follow on, Jerome Taylor and Daren Powell saw the Windies through to 280 forcing the Sri Lankas to return to the crease. By mid-evening, the tourists declared their second innings at 240/7 leaving West Indies 437 from 113 overs to win.

Given his run of poor form against Chaminda Vaas, captain Chris Gayle opted to send Bravo in his stead to open the innings with Devon Smith. Sri Lanka sniffed a chance to make some serious inroads before stumps as Smith was caught attempting to play a hook shot with the score on 22. Sarwan then joined Bravo to steady the ship until the close as both managed to play without much trouble and at a rate quick enough to keep alive any minute chance of a West Indian victory.  read more »

Shivnarine Chanderpaul continued his "Mighty Mouse" impersonation in this series and came to the Windies rescue again today. Dwayne Bravo joined him and the pair featured in an unbroken 77 run partnership for the fifth wicket on second day of the fourth and final Test at Chester-Le-Street.

The Test match started after lunch on the second day after rain had washed out the opening day. Put in to bat, the Windies were in trouble right away as Ryan Sidebottom had Daren Ganga's wicket with the first ball of the match. Ganga was slightly unlucky in that he turned a fullish delivery straight into the chest of Alastair Cook at bat pad. Maybe he should heed Sir Everton Weeke's famous advice of not hitting the ball in the air next time. The other three wickets that fell were all due to poor shot selection. Chris Gayle (28), already suffering a poor tour, went for an almighty heave-ho against Matthew Hoggard and was plum lbw when he missed the ball. Gayle looked out of sorts as he tried to blast his way out of his rut by going for big shots. Devon Smith's heart must have sunk when he left a straight one from Sidebottom only to hear the deadly sound of timber rattling behind him. He made only 4. Smith was probably expecting the ball to swing away from him, given the prodigious swing that Sidebottom had earlier extracted, but you can't just leave a ball that's headed straight for your stumps, swing or no swing. Runako Morton (6) did his best to outdo Gayle for the worst shot of the day when he tried to drive a shortish ball from Steve Harmison and gave a simple catch to Sidebottom in the covers.  read more »