Tea and Biscuits in the West Indies
Day 5: Barbados. Kraigg Brathwaite is obdurate in defence as he steers his team to a well deserved draw.
Day 5: Barbados. Kraigg Brathwaite is obdurate in defence as he steers his team to a well deserved draw.
The beauty of Test Match cricket, a real tangible lifelong beauty that will forever beguile us fans, is a wearing wicket on a 5th and final day where all results are still possible, as is any and everything else. From the somewhat stoic and slow cricket of a 5 day Test Match suddenly you can be in the midst of a slap and dash for quick runs akin to a one day game, a 20/20 “bash” or the even shorter 100 ball game. With a result, any result, in sight suddenly the sedate can become the stupendous as a team strives for quick run with big shots and the meticulous and methodical can become the manic madness of collecting wickets in a hurry for a last gasp victory, or the dogged defending of a team batting to save the Test Match against a fading light and a tired bowling attack.
Another pleasing beauty of the longest form of the cricketing game resides in the human characters that provide the entertainment and whom can often be propelled into a kind of cult hero status. Today’s hero and “Player of the Day” has held the title for the two days previous to this and thoroughly deserving of the more official honours no doubt bestowed upon him by the various television and newspaper journalists. West Indian Captain Kraigg Brathwaite has barely left the field of play since the start of this Test Match four days ago! Today he batted all afternoon and evening, receiving 184 deliveries for his obdurate and watchful 56 runs, bringing his match totals to over 200 runs from a ridiculous 673 deliveries faced. It’s been posited elsewhere that Brathwaite faced so many deliveries he left completely alone and watched pass by his bat that it encompasses two full sessions of Test Match cricket!
4+ hours of cricket that he watched, very watchfully, glide effortlessly on by on the river of life.
Staggering statistics indeed. As are the statistics for England’s burgeoning cult hero, Jack Leach, who bowled a staggering 95 combined overs for 160+ runs and more crucially, 6 wickets. Leach wheeled away, almost unbroken, for the two sessions of play and despite snagging the precious wickets of John Campbell, Jermaine Blackwood and Jason Holder, he couldn’t remove the West Indian Captain who doggedly (again) batted his side to a deserving draw. For that too is another of the enchantments of Test Match cricket: add in some adverse weather to a completely ordinary and unfit wicket to the multitude of cricketing playing principles above, and today the English search for quick runs ala a one-day match and the obdurate unyielding defence of a West Indies team led by their heroic Captain Brathwaite resulted in a draw. After five days in the cricketing “dirt”, five long and exhausting days under a Caribbean sun, the match petered out into a rather tame draw your faithful cricketing correspondent predicted at the end of day 2.
And if a draw after five long days in a sporting contest doesn’t confuse you, cricket has a habit of appropriating whether this draw was in fact a “winning draw” and all rather pleasingly this upside down language of a positive stalemate is yet another of the often overlooked beauties of Test Match cricket. This was definitely a winning draw for England for the dominance they exerted across the entire match and if they’d declared their innings 30 minutes earlier as your humble cricket correspondent was suggesting and indeed imploring in real time, then maybe those extra minutes could’ve forced the 5 wickets needed to officially win the Test Match they officially drew, but in a winning capacity. The West Indies too can lay claim to the winning draw as behind their Captain Brathwaite they refused to bend, scored 550+ runs and with their Captain still at the wicket, were looking rather comfortable and assured when Brathwaite himself and Joe Root shook hands to rubber stamp the draw.
And a winning draw, for varying reasons, for both sides.
So it’s off to the island of Grenada for the 3rd and final Test in 4 days time with the score still locked at 0–0. Television commentary from today suggests it will be more of the same and the contrarian within me would giggle at the absurdity of yet another draw, winning or otherwise, and the series ending 0–0.
There needs to be a winner in the final match. I just hope these two improving, but still second tier international teams, don’t cancel each other out again and Grenada provides a more exciting wicket than either Antigua or Barbados did.
Thanks for reading. Links below to my articles from all 4 previous days in this Test Match:
Tea and Biscuits in the West Indies
Day 1: Barbados. Root and Lawrence put the Windies to the sword on yet another placid and uninspiring Test Match…medium.com
Tea and Biscuits in the West Indies
Day 2: Barbados. The hosts are under the pump after a spectacular century from Ben Stokes.medium.com
Tea and Biscuits in the West Indies
Day 3: Barbados. Centuries from Brathwaite and Blackwood even a Test Match drifting to a draw.medium.com
Tea and Biscuits in the West Indies
Day 4: Barbados. A Captain’s knock from Brathwaite surely seals a 5th day draw for the West Indies.medium.com