The second Test in Grenada finished like the first in Barbados, with a batting performance as shambolic and uninspired from the home side as their bowling had been impressive. Everybody is bored of the eulogies for West Indies cricket: we’ve all been reading them for 25 years, and some of us have been writing them for what feels as long. But it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption, you still feel a pang of sadness when Tommy Williams steps out to meet Warden Norton for a midnight chat.
Australia shot down West Indies with as little remorse, all out for 143 in less than 35 overs on day four, the visitors winning by 133 runs at the Grenada National Stadium and going 2-0 up to win the series. It’s not that the scoreline is a surprise, given the resource disparity between the teams and administrations, but it still feels wrong to feel that a Test side has no chance of chasing once a target approaches 250.
West Indies had bowled well when Australia resumed at 221-7 to begin day four, with the two Josephs, Alzarri and Shamar, collectively having Pat Cummins nick behind from his first ball of the day, trap Alex Carey for only four additional runs to his overnight score, then knock Josh Hazlewood’s stumps out. All up Australia had added 22. But the key part was that a few balls kept low while still offering lateral seam. With 277 to get, nobody had confidence in the West Indies’ batting, least of all the West Indies batters.
John Campbell forgot that feet can move and was nailed in front by Josh Hazlewood before most people had resumed their seats. Kraigg Brathwaite in his hundredth Test went nowhere, poking around to add seven to his first-innings duck before nicking Beau Webster’s medium pace. Keacy Carty got a fierce working over, fingers turned into cevapcici by repeated blows to the gloves, before nicking Mitchell Starc. Brandon King got a Pat Cummins special, angled in, beating the outside edge to hit off stump. Hello, 4-33, goodbye contest.
It’s strange that a region where life revolves around the ocean should produce a team that is so far out of its depth. But it’s not for lack of trying. Caribbean long-form cricket is an afterthought domestically, and the cupboard is bare. The best first-class average in the squad is 34. Braithwate is surely at the terminus of a long decline, but has kept being picked on experience for want of a competitor. Campbell, Carty, and King are short-form players trying to adapt. Shai Hope had some Test triumphs in another life, but has returned from the white-ball Pet Sematary possessed by the accursed spirit of a desperate slogger.
Roston Chase had a few moments in his 34, including a mango-sweet flick off the pads that took six runs from Starc, but the captain’s 38-run stand with Hope was as good as it got for his team, and if anything, Hope’s innings of 17 looked worse than some of the knocks worth fewer. After a few bits of galloping nonsense, he pulled Hazlewood straight up the chimney for the bowler to wait underneath. Starc swung his way past another Chase flick, and at 86-6 that was it. A No 8 slogging two sixes from his first two balls might spark excitement with 50 runs to get, but it only speaks of desperation when there’s 180 to go.
The very next ball after Alzarri Joseph’s opening clouts against Lyon, Starc produced a shooter on the angle to get his third, Justin Greaves stranded as it smashed his front pad. The Josephs and Jayden Seales hit six sixes from Lyon, but he got them all out to end the game, and now is two wickets from passing Glenn McGrath’s Test tally of 563, with his average at a 13-year low of 30.14.
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It was a very even bowling performance, both innings with nobody taking more than three wickets or less than one. That’s easier when the opposition don’t have the tools to counter your own, and any move will work eventually. In a low-scoring series, Australia are still having their batting struggles, but West Indies would give anything for batting that only struggles that much. In a scheduled pink-ball Test in Jamaica, one more humiliation is on the cards. The only hope is that being this low eventually creates the drive, at home and in the international community, to decide on a path towards something better. It’s a long way off. West Indies may have to swim through a river of filth to come out clean.
