First-Class Matches West Indies 1989/90 to 1998/99

107 West Indies in 1993/94 West Indies’ Test match engagements in 1993/94 began during a short tour to Sri Lanka in December, in which a single Test was played – the first meeting between the sides at this level since Sri Lanka’s promotion to Test status in 1981/82. The tour, and the Test match, were ruined by rain. No play at all was possible on three of the scheduled six days of the Test, one of which had initially been planned as the rest day but which became a playing day after the first scheduled day’s play was washed out. Thanks to half-centuries from Richie Richardson and Carl Hooper, West Indies took a narrow first-innings lead; but soon after the start of the match’s third innings the rain was back, and the game had to be left as an unmemorable draw. A bigger challenge lay ahead with the visit of England for a five-match series between February and April 1994. This was the series in which Desmond Haynes bowed out of Test cricket after a career of 116 matches and 7,487 runs, and in which Shivnarine Chanderpaul began his 21-year Test career. But above all it will be remembered for the batting of Brian Lara, whose 798 runs in the series at an average a whisker under 100 were rounded off with a new Test record score of 375 in the final Test at St John’s. The series had already been decided in West Indies’ favour before this match, and in perfect batting conditions Lara was under no particular pressure as he seemed to set out, right from the start, to break Garry Sobers’ 36-year-old record of 365*. He reached the landmark early on the third day, prompting lengthy and deserved on-pitch celebrations, which included a handshake from Sobers himself. Only later did it emerge that Lara had probably trodden on his stumps when pulling the boundary that took him to the new record, but that passed unnoticed in the melee that followed. The first four Tests of the series had their moments too. West Indies won the first three without undue difficulty, thanks in no small part to the bowling of Kenny Benjamin (16 wickets in the first two matches) and Curtly Ambrose (11 wickets in the third), as well as the efforts of century- makers Keith Arthurton, Jimmy Adams, and, inevitably, Lara. In the third Test England were hurried to defeat when, needing 194 in the fourth innings for victory, Ambrose saw them off for 46, their second-lowest-ever total in 699 Test matches to date. As a result, few were prepared for the reversal of fortunes a fortnight later when England became the first visiting side to win a Test match at Bridgetown since 1934/35, the main credit going to the bowling of Angus Fraser (8-75 in West Indies’ first innings) and the batting of Alec Stewart, who became the first England player to score twin centuries in a Test against the West Indies. After that it was on to the historic match at St John’s, where the series’ only draw was recorded after England had exactly matched West Indies’ declared first-innings total of 593. A 3-1 series win, as well as the new Test record individual score, brought a highly satisfying conclusion to the West Indies’ international season. The domestic Red Stripe Cup was contested between the visit to Sri Lanka and the visit by England, which meant that, for the first time for three years, the leading players were available throughout the competition. Lara again dominated the event, as he warmed up for the series against England by overtaking Haynes’s 654 runs in 1990/91 to score a competition-record 715 runs at an average of 79.44 – getting on for 300 runs more than any other batsman. His scores in the last three matches of the competition included 180 (made out of 257 all out) for Trinidad & Tobago against Jamaica, 169 against Guyana, and 206 against Barbados, before he moved on to break more records in the Tests against England. He famously continued his 1993/94 form into the County Championship season of 1994, and over the period from late January to early June of that year he was just about unbowlable-to, scoring 2570 first-class runs in 20 innings at an average of 142.77, and including a quintuple-century, a triple-century, a double-century, and three other scores above 150. Only Don Bradman had ever managed a sequence anything like that.