Bopara excels in impregnable fortress

For decades, Kensington Oval was the impregnable fortress of West Indies cricket. Sides came here with aspiration and departed bereft and bruised from battering at the ramparts and the hammering inflicted on them by the rampant greats ... That was then, though, and this is now, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

West Indies are up against it now. To score 401 just to avoid the prospect of following-on is no easy task, even though the pitch has scarcely a mark worth calling a blemish. They were 85 for one last night, with Devon Smith (37 not out) and Ramnaresh Sarwan (40 not out) well ensconced. But for them, this will be a psychological battle as much as a technical one, the loss of Gayle a hammer blow at the end of two cataclysmic days in the field.

There are good cricketers and Test-match cricketers and, sometimes, a gulf divides them. Until now it was not known which category Ravi Bopara belonged to. When, in just under four hours of stylish batting, he brought up his maiden Test hundred yesterday, he put those doubts to bed for good, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.

To arrive at the happy place Ravi Bopara reached yesterday required a startling confluence of events. Without the birth of a baby, an injury to a key player and the poor form of another he would not have been in Bridgetown to compile a majestic maiden Test hundred and establish an impregnable position for England in the fourth Test, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

Mark Twain’s assertion that there are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies, and statistics - was hardly made with cricket in mind but it was accurately borne out by Fidel Edwards' figures in England's mammoth first innings. They were 30 overs, 3 for 151 and an utter injustice to the speed and spirit of a fast bowler who had every right to throw his hands in the air and to say to hell with it, writes Tony Cozier in the Trinidad Express.