Undercooked, inexperienced West Indies learn realities of Test cricket’s grind

Inevitable. Even West Indies wouldn’t mind if that’s the general conclusion drawn from the manner in which they have all but surrendered the first Test to England. They are lucky that the denouement is deferred to the third morning.

You don’t need to be in West Indies’ dressing room now to know how they must feel: dejected and defeated. Barely half an hour after the close of play, Jayden Seales, who took four first-innings wickets, sat with his head bowed before the media briefing started.

His first answer summed up the sombre mood in the visiting camp: Seales said it was “frustrating looking up at the scoreboard” on Friday evening with England four wickets away from an innings victory. Seales blamed West Indies’ batters for failing on Thursday.

Unfortunately, those batters failed on all fronts for second successive day. Once again, wickets fell in quick succession without any meaningful partnerships. In fact, the highest stand for the visitors in the match was the 44-run stand on Thursday between Mikyle Louis and Alick Athanaze. In contrast, England had three 50-plus stands that frustrated West Indies bowlers.

Unlike the overcast first day, Friday was wonderfully sunny with Lord’s festively dressed in red to mark ‘Red for Ruth Day’. Harry Brook and Joe Root looked set for a big score each, but each was defeated by the mastery of the bowler. Brook went for a premeditated pull, but Alzarri Joseph had banged in a short-of-a-length delivery on the fifth-stump line that climbed fast to gain a top edge while Gudakesh Motie, coming from around the wicket, bowled an arm ball disguised as inswinger which landed on the side of the seam to deviate naturally by that little bit, enough to push back Root’s off stump.

Motie has already bowled another wondrous delivery (this time from over the wicket), which pitched in the rough outside Ben Stokes’ off stump, coughed up dust, turned big, and rushed past the inside edge to uproot the middle stump, leaving the England captain wide-eyed and gaping with astonishment.

Then there was the amazing runout by Louis who charged in from deep point to pick up a miscue from Jamie Smith which landed in no-man’s-land before darting at bullseye and uprooting the stump to run out a hapless Shoaib Bashir.

Yet, those positives could not offset the mistakes of the batters. Virtually every visiting batter would look back at his dismissal today and acknowledge that he could have avoided that one action that proved fatal.

One learning for West Indies’ batters will be not getting stuck without scoring for long pockets of time, something that forced them to commit an error. Of course, the pressure created by a disciplined England bowling attack, which improved their lines quickly from the first innings, and focussed on sticking to good length and short-of-length was immense.

But as Holder briefly showed, you can pick the odd bad ball and cover up as long as you are not forcing the issue. Unfortunately, he failed to successfully duck a short delivery from Atkinson which came nearly a minute before the scheduled close.

England’s batters never found themselves under such an incessant scrutiny. When they look at the numbers, West Indies bowlers will notice there were 111 full-pitched deliveries (as recorded by ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data) off which England looted 131 runs while losing just one wicket.

While West Indies attempted to fire in the short ball to, as Seales said, force an error, the majority of those deliveries lacked the bluntness barring the one that got Brook. Instead, off 24 short deliveries, England picked 30 runs.

There are some individual learnings, too. One young man England fans were keen to watch was Shamar Joseph, the 24-year-old speed demon from the remote Guyanese village of Baracara. His heroics at the Gabba this January to stun Australia on an injured foot made him a compelling story.

On his first day at Lord’s, three days before the Test, Joseph said he and his team would look to “ruin” Anderson’s farewell. Not just that, he was confident about putting his name on the Honours Board, which eluded even Brian Lara. Joseph was not being cocky, having delivered on similar desire in the only two Tests he played – in Adelaide where he bagged a wicket on his first ball on debut and a five-for and then a seven-wicket haul in Brisbane.

At Lord’s, though, we will remember Joseph mainly for lying flat twice on his back, suffering cramps and stiffness in his leg and eventually walking off. Joseph had missed the warm-up match in Beckenham last week due to Hurricane Beryl disrupting flights from the Caribbean. He had not played any red-ball cricket since January 29, when the Gabba Test finished and since then was just playing or training in a T20 environment – in IPL and then in the World Cup.

Test cricket, Joseph will know now, is ruthless. You can’t just turn up and hit the straps. The hard yards are necessary: he can look at Atkinson, who opted out of the playing at Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL to focus on playing first-class cricket because the ECB had set England-after-Anderson in motion. The best example is Anderson himself – 40,000-plus deliveries in Test cricket, but never did he forget to be ready.

Fitness, temperament, patience, consistency and relentless discipline: these are the factors that underpin Anderson’s longevity and unparalleled success. The same applies to Stokes.

A Test defeat in just over two days is embarrassing, no doubt. Unfortunately for West Indies, this is the second time this year they find themselves in that position. This January, they lost the first Test of the Australia series in Adelaide inside three days. A week later, they turned up for the pink-ball Test in Brisbane and created history by winning a Test match in Australia for the first time since 1997.

But expecting a miracle like the one Joseph performed is wishful. The turnaround in this three-match Test series is fast so West Indies have the disadvantage of not having any time to switch off. Nor do they have the luxury of another warm-up: they have to do things on the run.