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

133 West Indies in 1994/95 For the first time ever, West Indies played as many as three Test series in the 1994/95 season. And for the first time for a long time, they didn’t have things all their own way on the field. The action began in India in November and December 1994, in the first meeting of the sides for six years. Richie Richardson missed the tour after being advised by his doctors to take an extended break from the game, and in his absence the side was led by Courtney Walsh – the first specialist bowler to be formally appointed as West Indies’ Test captain. He oversaw a 1-1 draw in the three- match series. Although Brian Lara played in all three Tests, the batting star was the more obdurate Jimmy Adams, who played successive innings of 39, 81, 125*, 23, 174* and 78* for a series aggregate of 520 runs at an average of 173.33. At this stage of his career Adams was threatening to join the ranks of West Indies’ all-time greats: after 12 Tests he had scored a total of 1132 runs at 87.07, an average exceeded after 12 Tests only by Don Bradman’s 99.65. In the absence from the tour of CurtlyAmbrose (shoulder injury), Kenny Benjamin led the bowling attack with Walsh, and both took 17 wickets in the series. Even on the still-spin-friendly Indian pitches, the West Indies’ slower bowlers could not come close to matching the performances of their Indian opposite numbers, and it was only thanks to Adams, Walsh and Benjamin that they were able to square the series in the final Test, after a defeat and a draw in the two earlier matches. The side reassembled for a two-Test visit to New Zealand in February 1995. In conditions more suited to their quicker bowlers, and with Ambrose back in the squad to partner Walsh and the two Benjamins (Kenny and Winston), West Indies were able once again to launch their four-man pace attack in the first Test at Christchurch, but the game ended as a rain-ruined draw. Things were rather different at Wellington, where the batsmen thrived to the tune of 660-5 declared (Adams 151, Lara 147, and wicketkeeper Junior Murray a maiden Test century off 88 balls) before the pace attack – and more specifically Walsh, with match figures of 13-55 – polished off their opponents twice in short order to win by an innings and the little matter of 322 runs. Since controversially losing in New Zealand in 1979/80, West Indies were now unbeaten in 29 successive Test series (two of them consisting of a single match only). But this phenomenal run had to end somewhere and some time, and that time finally came in the home series against Australia that began on the last day of March 1995. Richardson returned for the four-Test series, in which defeats by ten wickets in the first Test (their second successive defeat at ‘Fortress Bridgetown’) and by an innings in the last at Kingston sandwiched a rain-affected draw at St John’s and a nine-wicket win at Port of Spain. The series loss was their first against Australia since 1975/76, in the series that had prompted the development of their all-pace attack. A side that had for some time been just about clinging on to its ‘invincible’ tag finally had to accept that they were invincible no longer. The reasons were not hard to find. Their pace attack now relied almost exclusively on Ambrose and Walsh, with the back-up men now taking the role more of support bowlers rather than a strike force in their own right. There were no quality spinners to take advantage of the slower pitches now found in many countries. And if Lara and Adams failed, there was little in the batting to hold the upper order together. The side that Richardson led was now, sadly, little more than a shadow of the world-beaters of the previous 20 years. In domestic cricket, those 20 years – and particularly the earlier part of them - had been dominated by Barbados. At one time, many felt that that one small island alone could have taken on the world, and beaten it. But their star too had faded, and their success in winning the Red Stripe Cup in 1994/95 was their first for four seasons, and only their second in nine. It was a close battle at the top with the Leeward Islands, in which both teams won three of their five matches, and in the