ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2017

West Indies in 2016/17 For the West Indies Test team it was a year that was, perhaps, summed up by a single delivery. It has been suggested before on these pages that the current West Indian side is lacking in determination and obduracy, but for almost all of the last day of their series against Pakistan in May 2017 those qualities were displayed in abundance as the whole side fought for an unlikely draw that would also have squared the series. But all the good work was undone when, off the last ball of what would have been the penultimate over of the match – and with the man waiting to take the final over already having over 100 runs to his name – the hitherto defensive number 11 essayed a huge, unnecessary, slog, and inside-edged the ball on to his stumps. And thus the series was lost. Somehow the West Indies Test team, as a unit, seems all too often unable to produce the goods when it really matters. True, they won one Test in each of the three series they played over the period covered by this Annual ; but each of the series was lost 2-1, and they never led in any of them. No one could argue that those results were unfair. The first of these series was against Pakistan in the UAE. In both the first two Tests Pakistan capitalized on substantial first-innings leads to secure comfortable victories, even though West Indies performed significantly better in the second half of each match than they had in the first. With the series lost, West Indies surprisingly won the third Test – their first away win in a Test against a higher-ranked side since beating South Africa at Port Elizabeth in December 2007. For the victory they had to thank above all opener Kraigg Brathwaite, who carried his bat for 142* in the first innings and was 60* in the second when the victory was secured, to make him the first opener ever to be ‘not out’ in both innings of a Test match. He at least could not be faulted for his determination and obduracy. The return series against Pakistan in the Caribbean some six months later began with a seven-wicket defeat in the first Test, but this was followed by a 106-run victory in the second, thanks this time to the batting of Roston Chase (131 in the first innings) and the improving Shai Hope, and to the bowling of Shannon Gabriel, who took nine wickets in the match. Sadly, it was Gabriel’s batting in the final Test that brought about its premature end, as already described. Then it was on to England for a three-match series at the tail-end of a long English season. The two teams’ recent form and relative standings in the Test rankings suggested an easy win for the home side, and so it proved in the first Test, won by England by an innings and 209 runs after a masterly innings from Alastair Cook (243). The match finished inside three days, with the West Indies losing 19 wickets on that third day. So their victory in the second Test was all the more welcome for being totally unexpected. Set what seemed an unlikely 322 to win in the fourth innings, on a tense final day they reached their target with only five wickets down, but with less than five overs to spare. The hero of the hour was Shai Hope, who scored 147 and 118* in the match – the first player ever to score twin centuries in a first-class match at Headingley, though he was very nearly beaten to that landmark by Brathwaite, who made 134 and 95. But then came a low-scoring final Test at Lord’s, where West Indies reverted to type and England’s nine-wicket win secured the series. The renaming of the West Indies Cricket Board as Cricket West Indies in June 2017, and the subsequent rebranding of the team as ‘Windies’, seemed to bring few immediate benefits on or off the field. The Test side continued to be without several of the Caribbean’s biggest hitters (literally and metaphorically), and after the series in the UAE the list of absentees was lengthened when Darren Bravo was left out, initially for ‘disciplinary reasons’. Late in the English summer there were reports that some of the missing players – notably Chris Gayle – may be willing to return to Test cricket; but it hasn’t happened yet, and many fear that it never will. 565