West Indies stumble again

Ricky Skerritt would have taken in a healthy monetary collection after the first day of the fifth and final Test yesterday.

The West Indies manager, acting on suggestions from his captain and coach, has instituted a system of fines for this match for those guilty of the slackness evident throughout the series.

Some would have had to pay up last night for wanton shots that have put the West Indies in a familiar bind at 214 for nine and the most culpable was Carl Hooper himself.

The skipper entered the fray in the first over after lunch with the West Indies already in strife at 54 for four and Alan Donald, fast and eager, making up for the Antigua Test he missed with a strained hamstring.

Hooper met Brian Lara, on seven, so that the responsibility of a recovery rested with the West Indies' two best and most experienced batsmen.

For an hour-and-25-minutes, they played with the diligence the situation, and their roles, demanded.

They added 53 and raised the spirits of a small Sabina Park depressed by the earlier, cheap loss of the three young Jamaicans of whom Leon Garrick's first innings in Test cricket was ended by Donald's first ball of the match.

Concerned by the growing partnership, Shaun Pollock devised a plan as old as the game itself. He set a deep square-leg back and simply challenged the batsmen to hook.

It had worked twice in the series but then the delinquent batsman was Ramnaresh Sarwan, a boy of 20, new to the ways of Test cricket. He could scarcely believe that he could so con someone in his 85th Test and the captain at that. But he did. In his seventh over of a lengthy spell after lunch, captain Pollock set up his counterpart with a clever slower ball that he pushed into the off-side, followed by the bouncer, fast and rising steeply.

Hooper could not control his first hook shot of the day and the ball sailed fully 60 yards into Gary Kristen's safe grasp. It was a stroke, like the pull that lobbed to mid-on in his previous innings in Antigua, that was not uncommon in his earlier cricketing life but that he had seemed to exorcise since his return.

In Pollock's next over, Ridley Jacobs, who has fallen into a slump since his unbeaten113 in the third Test, edged Pollock to wicketkeeper Mark Boucher who held one of the five out of the eight catches offered him for the day.

It left the West Indies 107 for five and Lara with the bowlers to see what they could make of the last half of the innings. That they exactly doubled the total was due to Lara's skilfully compiled 81, lasting three hours, 50 minutes with 12 fours, spirited batting by Merv Dillon, 25, and Dinanath Ramnarine, unbeaten 28, and luck.

Fortune smiled most on Dillon who had two chances to Boucher, the first before he had scored, and one to Lance Klusener at midon; the ball after he hoisted left-arm spinner Paul Adams for the day's only six.

The West Indian wastefulness began with the first ball of the match when Garrick, the diminutive, 24-year-old opener on debut, cut Donald obligingly straight to gully. Only one other batsman, the South African Jimmy Cook, had suffered such immediate indignity in his first Test.

Garrick deserved sympathy. He was not in the original squad but was rushed down to Kingston from his home in St Ann the day before and told he was in the eleven.

It was hardly proper preparation for the start of a Test career but it was typical of how things are done in West Indies cricket these days.

For instance, it was learnt, through the television coverage, that Ramnaresh Sarwan was carrying a stress fracture of the right femur and would have to rest for at least four weeks. But, said Skerritt, it was not the reason he was omitted.

By lunch, taken at 53 for three, the left-handers Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Chris Gayle had also gone. Chanderpaul, never comfortable, presented Boucher with his first catch from an edged defensive push at Jacques Kallis.

Gayle sliced his loose backfoot shot to gully, a carbon copy of his dismissal in the previous Test and another dismissal worthy of a hefty fine.

When Marlon Samuels was Donald's third victim in the first over after lunch, fending leaden-footed at a fast ball that held its line, Lara and Hooper came together. It appeared to be the West Indies' last hope of revival.

Hooper let them down but Lara responded to his dismissal by taking control.

He was 35, off 92 balls with four fours, when his captain departed. He accelerated with thrilling drives, cuts and pulls so that he added 46 off 64 balls with eight more fours before Pollock dismissed him.

Lara's only problems were caused by the bouncer. He took blows from both Donald and Pollock and, caught in two minds to another short lifter from Pollock, he fended a catch to slip off the back of the bat.

The last time Dillon and Ramnarine were together they had little intention of batting. This time they played with spirit to frustrate the South Africans.

Dillon spent over two hours, adding 54 with Lara and 21 with Ramnarine, before Donald dispatched him with the second ball with the second new ball.

But Ramnarine was there at the end with his highest Test score, 26, from the last two wickets and Courtney Walsh is still in.