As usual, the West Indies followed one step forward at Providence with a couple back at Warner Park.
The heartening, hard-fought victory in the first Test, especially given its turbulent background and the prominent role of much maligned captain Darren Sammy, should have been the cue for a confident, aggressive approach to the second.
Instead, what surfaced was the lack of self-belief and the inconsistency that have been typical of West Indies teams for the past dozen years.
Perhaps they were shocked to find a pitch that yielded 1 324 runs for 19 wickets in the previous year’s drawn Test, now so helpful to spin that Pakistan’s left-armer Abdur Rehman said he would like to take it around the world with him.
There was some justification in their complaints, as there was in their widely shared suspicions over the action of their main tormentor Saeed Ajmal.
Yet, from the preceding One-Day Internationals (ODIs), Ajmal, Rehman and the off-spinner Mohammed Hafeez had exposed the flawed technique of most modern West Indian batsmen against spin, a consequence of the sub-standard surfaces at regional level that compound the problem.
That those at the bottom of the order, Kemar Roach, Ravi Rampaul and Davendra Bishoo, were as comfortable as anyone against it told a story. Even so, the West Indies often got themselves into promising positions. The problem was that whenever they had their grip firmly on Pakistan’s throat, they loosened it, seemingly satisfied that the pressure was enough for their opponents to succumb.
The upshot was dubious tactics, most glaring while they simply passed the time, hanging around for Pakistan’s second innings declaration, taking the new ball after 110 overs only because the regulations obliged them to.
From as early as the second morning, with Pakistan 194 for nine batting first, they suddenly and explicably went flat. They appeared to be waiting for the last wicket to inevitably fall, rather than pressing for it.
They were so out of it that Sammy declined to call for the review on Davendra Bishoo’s clear lbw that would have sent Tanvir Ahmed back for one.
He scored another 56 and added 78 for the last wicket with Ajmal. It was a session in which Pakistan recognised chinks in the West Indies approach.
The top order wobble that followed was not surprising but Roach and Rampaul battled for an hour and a quarter, adding 60 to limit the deficit to 49. The West Indies were once more back in the contest but they now dropped their guard or, more the point, a couple of match-turning catches.
Roach improved with every spell during the series. He and the revitalised Rampaul comprise an impressive new ball pair and they might well have brushed aside the top order during a telling opening spell.
To the contrary, Roach denied himself the third ball dismissal of Hafeez with a no-ball and then had the left-handed Taufeez Ahmed dropped in the slips at one and 14.They were unmistakable omens for an inexperienced and temperamentally unstable team.
Even then, the match was as good as over. Not so Taufeeq’s chequered career. His previous innings were 19, 0 and 11. This was his last chance and, given his luck, he advanced to 135, his first hundred since 2003, and the Man Of The Match award to boot.
What effect the setback will have on the psyche of the team for the upcoming series against India is not difficult to imagine, even if the World Cup champions and the No.1 ranked Test team are without some of their mightiest guns.
As it was throughout the Pakistan series, the West Indies’ greatest threat will again be internal.
There has been no indication that the acrimonious slanging matches between the two most experienced players, Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, and the latest in the long line of chief executives of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), Ernest Hilaire, along with their various associates, is at an end.
Chanderpaul’s withdrawal from the second Test hours before the start with a reported shoulder injury and his immediate departure for home has added to the intrique.
In the meantime, Gayle has been starring in the fourth Indian Premier League (IPL), bombarding the stands with sixes and fours.
He should, he said, have been back in the Caribbean for the series against Pakistan but, without proper communication from Hilaire, had been “forced” to accept a late contract with the Bangalore franchise. Hilaire countered with a bunch of e-mails setting out the WICB’s case and refuting the charges.
The confrontations are messier than they have ever been, and that’s saying something. Until they are at an end, West Indies cricket will never drag itself out of the mire – although those involved seem not inclined to see it that way.
In the meantime, Gayle’s status for the series against India remains the subject of emotional conjecture.
Hilaire has put the issue squarely with the selectors. Speaking at a cricket function in Trinidad last week, he said they would “select the players they feel will best represent the West Indies and within the selection policy”.
That policy, published by the WICB last August, includes a provision that “a player must demonstrate a commitment to West Indies cricket” and “must always demonstrate pride in representing the region and display exemplary behaviour on and off the field of play”.
As with selectors everywhere, the West Indies panel sees its job as putting the best XI on the field. Test matches are no place to start development, as was seen with the premature promotion in St Kitts of the prolific teenager Kraigg Brathwaite, by his record clearly a West Indies opener in the long term.
For last year’s tour of Sri Lanka, the selectors chose Sulieman Benn even though he was unavailable for the first of three Tests as he served a disciplinary suspension from the International Cricket Council (ICC), his second in a year. No consideration there, it seemed, for displaying “exemplary behaviour on and off the field of play”.
For the recent first Test against Pakistan, they picked Chanderpaul, for all his harsh, open and repeated criticism of team management, particularly coach Ottis Gibson. If his subsequent relations with Gibson and others in management were especially frosty, it reflected poorly on both sides.
Gayle was equally caustic in his comments on the WICB and Gibson. If he comes back [as he is likely to, given the Benn and Chanderpaul examples, and with his record and experience], he and the coach need to get together and sort out their differences as best they can. If they can’t, one or the other would have to go his separate way.
