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

223 West Indies in 1997/98 West Indies fell to their second successive away series defeat when they were crushed 3-0 in Pakistan in November/December 1997. This was the first time they had lost a series to Pakistan since 1958/59, and the first time they had lost all the matches in a three-Test series since losing to England in their inaugural Test series in 1928. These were not just defeats, they were embarrassments, as West Indies went down by an innings in the first two Tests, and by ten wickets in the third. Their batsmen did them no favours, for in their six innings in the series the side only once made a total higher than 216 as the pace of (in particular) Wasim Akram and the guile of Mushtaq Ahmed or Saqlain Mushtaq proved their undoing. Courtney Walsh – retained as captain against the wishes of many – took five, five and four wickets in the three complete Pakistan innings, and relative newcomer Merv Dillon chipped in with five in the final Test in Karachi. But the West Indies’ spin attack was not up to the challenge, and made no significant inroads into a Pakistan batting line-up that made four centuries in their three full innings of the series, all of them scores of over 150. In West Indies’ six team innings, one score of 106 from Carl Hooper, and a 95 by Shiv Chanderpaul, were their only individual innings that got beyond the 70s. The knives were now out, and Walsh was finally replaced as Test captain by Brian Lara for the series back home against England in February and March 1998. Nerves were steadied by a 3-1 series win, continuing West Indies’ dominance at home against England, who were now without a series win in the Caribbean in their last six visits since their success under Colin Cowdrey in 1967/68. Six matches were started in the series, but the first, at Kingston, was called off after only 10.1 overs because of the dangerous condition of the pitch – the first such abandonment in almost 1400 Test matches played up to that time. Attention was thus drawn to growing shortcomings in the standard of pitch-preparation in the West Indies, as a result of which the hard, fast, but reliable pitches on which their pace bowlers had for so long thrived were no longer the norm in the region – as witnessed by the increasing success of spin bowlers, at domestic level at least. Following the Kingston abandonment, an extra Test was hastily arranged in Trinidad, which West Indies won by three wickets after being required to score the highest total of the match for victory. England did precisely the same thing in the following game, also at Port of Spain. Although England had the upper hand in the drawn fifth game at Bridgetown, either side of it the West Indies had much the better of things, winning the fourth Test by 242 runs and the sixth by an innings. For once, all members of the West Indies’ upper order fired at some point in the series (five batsmen each made a score of 90 or more over the six games), while Ambrose (30 wickets in the series) and Walsh (22) as usual seemed to save their best for series against England. But the support from the other pacemen continued to fall away, and this proved the last Test series for two of the long- serving members of that group, Ian Bishop (161 wickets in 43 Tests back to 1988/89) and Kenny Benjamin (92 wickets in 26 Tests since 1991/92). The ten-year sponsorship by Red Stripe of the domestic first-class competition came to an end ahead of the 1997/98 season, and in the absence of a new sponsor the teams played for a cup donated in the name of the WICB President. The experiments of the two previous seasons were done away with, and the event was back to the earlier single round-robin format – albeit one spread out between early January and late April. For some time the side that had suffered most from the weather in the previous season, Guyana, looked the likely winners, but with wins in each of their last three matches the Leeward Islands