Air we go again

Kensington Oval, for so long the trusty bastion of West Indies cricket, yesterday experienced at first hand the harm and humiliation repeatedly inflicted on West Indies cricket at other venues across the globe in recent times.

This is the ground where they have been beaten in only three of the 38 Tests since 1930 and where they trounced India by ten wickets just six weeks ago.

Yet the West Indies were as abysmal on the second day of the Cable & Wireless Tests against New Zealand as they have been in any of the 24 defeats they have suffered in their last 27 Tests outside the Caribbean.

Lacking the will, as much as the resources, to maintain the tight hold they gained midway through Friday's opening day, they allowed their resilient opponents to transform 117 for five into 337 before they could complete the job 20 minutes after lunch yesterday.

They then collapsed through a succession of reckless, unpardonable strokes to 107 all out, their lowest total at Kensington since England bowled them out for 102 on an uncovered, rain-affected pitch in 1935.

Pedro Collins removed opener Mark Richardson to a first slip catch with the last ball of the first of seven overs at the end of the day when New Zealand predictably chose to spurn the follow-on, in spite of a lead of 230. But it was scant consolation.

Three days remain and there has been nothing, in either a slow pitch of variable but not unmanageable bounce or the divergent approaches of the teams, to remotely suggest New Zealand can be prevented from recording the victory in the Caribbean that eluded them for 11 Tests and three previous tours.

Their position was established by the common sense, team work and purpose that explain their No.3 rating in the current ICC Test championship standings.

They are attributes the West Indies appeared to have finally acquired during their 2-1 series triumph over India earlier in the season but they have vanished into thin air in the space of a day and a half.

Thin air was where most of their unthinking batsmen chose to hit the ball, seemingly for the New Zealanders to confirm their status as one of the game's finest fielding teams.

They paid no heed to how their opponents had diligently rebuilt their innings by grafting for runs on a pitch of sluggish pace and variable bounce.

It was a recovery built around captain Stephen Fleming's quality 130 on Friday but would not have been possible without wicket-keeper Robbie Hart's unwavering adherence to the basics that occupied five hours, 20 minutes and 220 balls for his unbeaten 57.

Even No.8 Daryl Tuffey's defiance for an hour-and-a-half for 28 while adding 53 with Hart should have been a clue to even a schoolboy cricketer as to what was required.

Yet those for whom the game is a richly rewarded profession once more failed to appreciate their responsibility to their team and their public.

Eight batsmen were out to catches in the field four in the deep, four closer to the bat. All were attempting big shots. It was out and out folly.

The West Indies were instantly and initially unsettled by the raw pace of the 27-year-old Bond Shane Bond.

After impressing Australians, who are grudging in their praise, not least for their neighbours across the Tasman Sea, on his first tour late last year, Bond's reputation preceded him to the Caribbean.

His first ball proved it was not misplaced. It passed Chris Gayle outside off-stump before he could raise his bat and immediately shook a previously somnolent crowd of around 5 000 into the animated buzz that all genuine fast bowlers generate.

Bond was consistently clocked at over 90 miles an hour on TWI Television's speedgun and once touched 93.1. It was the kind of pace that was once the West Indies' preserve, several times over.

Unlike the slower modern West Indian, Bond backed it up with control and was soon on a hat-trick.

Gayle's feet were as heavy as a Mafia victim's as he tamely drove the first ball of Bond's third over into wide cover's lap.

Ramnaresh Sarwan, who filled the breach, apparently learnt nothing from the day-and-a-half he spent in the field observing the New Zealanders' batting. If he had he couldn't have attempted an expansive pull off his first ball.

It was fractionally short and faster than any Sarwan has encountered since Brett Lee in Australia a year-and-a-half ago. It predictably found high on the bat and travelled limply to mid-on where Ian Butler dived to his right to catch it.

So Brian Lara had to enter at six for two, a situation to take his mind back to his prolific series in Sri Lanka late last year. From the start, he shaped better than he has done at any time since then.

What he made of what he saw from his colleagues at the opposite end can only be guessed at.

Wavell Hinds swatted at a bouncer from the towering Tuffey and shook his head in wonder at his folly as it skewed from the splice and skied no more than ten yards away into the waiting hands of gully.

But the sequence of suicide strokemakers was not at an end.

As soon as Butler, sharp if not as rapid, took over from Bond, captain Carl Hooper chose the hook as his best option for the first bouncer that came along. Tuffey, situated at long-leg between the Inniss and Hewitt Stands, safely gathered the resulting catch.

Hopes of a recovery from 47 for four rested fairly and squarely on the left-handed batting of Lara, by now into his stride, and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the form batsmen of the season.

They went into tea unbeaten but a long scoreless period, against Butler and the tall left-arm spinner Daniel Vettori, in which he was kept on 28 for 25 balls, built the pressure on Lara.

When captain Fleming brought cover into silly point and Vettori dropped the next ball short, Lara saw his chance to go through the consequent opening.

He cut hard against the turn, out of the bowler's footmarks, but just dragged the ball back into his leg-stump from the inside-edge.

He had played without problem for nearly an hour-and-a-half and the New Zealanders knew they had removed their main stumbling block.

Chanderpaul was the other but, by then, the epidemic had spread through the dressing room and he could find no one to stay with him.

Ridley Jacobs swung a high catch to mid-wicket off the top edge, Collins turned Butler round the corner where Vincent lept to claim the catch and Adam Sanford touched Butler to the keeper.

It was all over when Powell and Merv Dillon, in at No.11 where he began his career, were out to top-edged sweeps from Vettori.

The swift demise was in stark contrast to the purposeful progress of the New Zealand innings from its overnight 257 for six.

The West Indies could only find one wicket in the first session as Hart and Tuffey did the simple things simply.

The only success was the left-handed Vettori for 39. He cut four more boundaries to add to the four he had at the start but then clipped Collins off the legs to square-leg.

They had to wait another hour-and-a-half before they dislodged Tuffey, lbw for Powell's first Test wicket.

Bond followed right away, bowled middle stump off the inside edge, and Butler was last man out, stranded in mid-pitch in confused calling with Hart. But, by then, their main task was bowling, not batting, and they returned to do it well.