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Big picture: Can WI go to the well again?
They were putting out the bunting ever so briefly at Trent Bridge last week. Roll up, roll up, free entry for the fifth and final day! Relive the glories of that first heady summer of Bazball in 2022… marvel at the chutzpah! Swoon at the strokeplay! Savour the glorious uncertainty of Test cricket at its finest!
At 61 for 0 chasing 385, it was all systems go for a marketing coup de theatre to rival that which Jonny Bairstow delivered so gloriously on this same ground two years ago… until all of a sudden it wasn’t. Instead, ten West Indies wickets tumbled in the space of 23.1 overs, five of them to another precocious display of attacking offspin from Shoaib Bashir, and that, as they say, was that.
Despite the obvious euphoria among the England players and the fans in the ground who were lucky enough to witness the dramatic denouement, it was hard to escape an underlying sense of deflation at West Indies’ demise. For three days and two sessions, they punched eagerly above their weight, with Kavem Hodge’s wonderful maiden century the centrepiece of their efforts.
But despite making 457 at Trent Bridge to secure a first-innings lead of 41, West Indies have now been bowled out for a sum total of 400 runs in their other three innings of the series – 121, 136 and 143. No one has made so much as a half-century in those efforts, while the only England bowler who is currently averaging more than 25 for the series is the phenomenally luckless Mark Wood, whose scorchingly quick spells helped prise more than a few openings at the other end.
The overall impression is of a series dripping with goodwill, and underpinned by an almost patronising desire for an equal contest to break out, but one in which the sport’s structural issues are sure to win out in the end. Nasser Hussain on Sky Sports likened the Trent Bridge Test to an arm-wrestle, in which the effort it took simply to stay vertical eventually gave way to a splat of forearm on table-top. Can West Indies find the strength to go again? A fair few day three and four ticket-holders will be anxiously urging them to dig deep.
There is, of course, another factor nudging into the picture during this Test. The fourth season of the Hundred got underway earlier this week, a tournament that was expressly commissioned to help future-proof the English summer. However, the very fact of its existence continues to gnaw at the fabric of English Test cricket.
We’re not quite going to face the optics of an entire summer with no August Test match, as was the case during the Ashes last year, but the alternative isn’t ideal either. What’s the message this scheduling sends from on high? Move along, nothing to see here? All aboard the shiny new gravy-train? Or does the grand old game dig in and fight for its pre-eminence against its new salty-snacked overlords?
With the greatest respect to England’s efforts to inspire with their unfettered approach to Test cricket, the extent to which Test cricket fights its corner this week rests unfairly and unequally on the shoulders of the team that is already 2-0 down.
Form guide
England WWLLL (last five Tests, most recent first)
West Indies WLWLD
In the spotlight: Pope and Louis
A haul of 229 runs in three innings, comprising a century and two fifties, is pretty convincing evidence of a batter’s form… right? Oddly, it’s not quite that simple for Ollie Pope right now. Without question, those runs prove his tenacity, and indicate that he is tracking in the right direction, but as the man himself has conceded, he’s yet to feel quite as composed as those returns would imply. He was twice dropped – on 46 and 54 – en route to his hundred at Trent Bridge, and while he felt he “played better in the second innings”, he is still coming out of a notable form slump, having averaged 19.05 in 18 red-ball innings for England and Surrey prior to Lord’s.
Moreover, that record follows directly on from one of the greatest performances – not only of Pope’s career, but also in all of England’s Test history. His sensational 196 in Hyderabad earlier this year was Pope in excelsis, an innings tinged with such genius that it’s entirely possible he’ll never play that well again. If he’s still trying to process the implications, then all he can do in the meantime is keep those runs flowing.
As West Indies’ first Test cricketer from the island of St Kitts, Mikyle Louis has already made history in this series, and he has made a decent impression too, with a solid technique, a (mostly) sound temperament, and a bullet arm, as shown by his superb run-out of Bashir at Lord’s, one of the most uplifting moments of a campaign that has rarely lacked spirit and togetherness. But despite double figures in each of his four innings to date, Louis has yet to go past the 27 he made in his maiden innings.
He has been undone in a variety of guises along the way – a worldie of a catch here, a ball-change there; a drinks-break lapse at Trent Bridge, and one utter shocker of a slog at Bashir – all of which point to his lack of experience, over and above any single irredeemable flaw. The only remedy to that, of course, is more experience. But, with Tagenarine Chanderpaul the notable absentee on this tour, Louis could do with a score of note at Edgbaston to ensure he gets that chance to further his education.
Team news: Wood retained, Sinclair injured
England were quick to name an unchanged squad in the aftermath of victory at Trent Bridge, and now they’ve trotted out an unchanged XI too. There was never any prospect of wholesale changes, especially in the batting, where Dan Lawrence was down in Southampton on Wednesday night, propping up London Spirit’s Hundred opener.
The interesting decision concerned the fast bowling. Wood bowled rockets at Trent Bridge, and might have earned a break as a consequence, but it seems England’s priority is testing his robustness for back-to-back Tests. The uncapped Dillon Pennington and Matthew Potts, the latter sidelined since 2022, wait patiently in the wings for an opportunity, but that won’t now come until the Sri Lanka series at the earliest.
England: 1 Zak Crawley, 2 Ben Duckett, 3 Ollie Pope, 4 Joe Root, 5 Harry Brook, 6 Ben Stokes (capt), 7 Jamie Smith (wk), 8 Chris Woakes, 9 Gus Atkinson, 10 Mark Wood, 11 Shoaib Bashir
Kevin Sinclair has been ruled out due to a fractured forearm, courtesy of the exocet bouncer from Mark Wood that dismissed him at Trent Bridge. Gudakesh Motie, who dropped out of the morning of the match after succumbing to a bout of flu, seems to be over his illness, and reclaims his spinner’s spot. Unfortunately he seems to have passed it to Shamar Joseph instead. Akeem Jordan is on standby for his debut.
West Indies: 1 Kraigg Brathwaite (capt), 2 Mikyle Louis, 3 Kirk McKenzie, 4 Alick Athanaze, 5 Kavem Hodge, 6 Jason Holder, 7 Joshua da Silva (wk), 8 Gudakesh Motie, 9 Alzarri Joseph, 10 Shamar Joseph / Akeem Jordan, 11 Jayden Seales
Pitch and conditions
A pleasant week of weather is in prospect in Birmingham, with the prospect of a scorcher on Monday – if the contest extends that far. The pitch is a browner hue than can sometimes be the case, with the expectation that it’ll be quite flat. Anything circa 400 has been a par score in recent matches, particularly against India and Australia in the last two seasons.
Stats and trivia
Quotes
“I think that will come naturally. With six Test matches, even though we’ve got a decent break with the Hundred played between that, fast bowling is very hard. So naturally we will see a change in the bowling attack. But no, not quite yet.”
Ben Stokes expects a chance for Pennington and Potts against Sri Lanka, but sticks to his chosen attack for now
“We batted well at Trent Bridge but we didn’t bat well in the second innings. And we bowled well in places. Collectively, we dropped chances … that can happen. But our groupings as a bowling unit weren’t as they should be. Once we get that percentage up, we’ll be able to create more chances and at least be able to stop the flow of runs on both sides of the wicket.”
Kraigg Brathwaite, West Indies’ captain, targets improvements if his team are to compete more evenly
Andrew Miller is UK editor of ESPNcricinfo. @miller_cricket
