Caught napping

Ouch! In fact, ouch and double ouch! That hurt.

Stuart Broad managed his first Michelle in Tests, which is a useful milestone on the way to a successful career, but otherwise the only England player who had a good match was Owais Shah.

But let us not get too carried away.

Tempting though it is to blame the off-field shenanigans and distractions, my view is that far too much is being made of them.

Most of the England players were in the team for at least one of the comprehensive series thrashings which England have administered to WI these last five years, and WI’s ICC ranking remains stubbornly poor. All the pre-series talk, both in England and in the Caribbean, was of how England were expected to win, as the form book would predict. It is asking an awful lot of the England players not to have gone into this game with a general attitude that they ought to be able to win it with something to spare.

They were not expecting to find a West Indies side full of fight and determination, nor were they expecting that Jerome Taylor would bowl by far the best spell of his life. Some of the batsmen played injudicious shots but the ball which dismissed Pietersen was as near to perfection as you can get, and when you couple it to all the other surprises the Windies had sprung, it’s almost understandable that England just fell apart.

As wake-up calls go, this Test was the equivalent of thirty churches pealing the summons to matins while forty roosters crow themselves hoarse and the hotel management sends in SWAT teams to roust people out of bed.

It is early, though, to be deciding that England are in complete disarray and will probably lose the rest of the matches – at least until they’ve had their orange juice and a good strong cup of coffee. Most of this team played in New Zealand a year ago, looking like lemons in the first Test but coming back and duffing up the Black Caps for most of the next five games. And last time England were rolled over in the Caribbean, when Curtly Ambrose scythed them down to 46 all out, the same XI went into the next game and became the first visitors to win in Barbados for 59 years.

England are more likely to repeat what they did after Hamilton than after Port of Spain: surely nobody is going to fall for the idea that the people who dug the hole should be told to dig out of it. If they aren’t going to give Owais Shah a go after that debacle, then he might as well pack his bags and go home – although the appalling weather we are having in England might make him hesitate before booking the plane ticket. Whether the bowlers should be changed will partly depend on what the Antigua pitch looks like, but Swann and Anderson did their chances of selection for the second Test no harm at all by not playing in Jamaica.

But it is also early to be elevating Jerome Taylor to the WI pantheon of great fast bowlers. I’ve had my eye on him as a much-improved bowler for a year or so now, and he could yet make it to the pinnacle, but there is a long way to go yet. After all, look where the bloke who took 7-12 last time these two sides met at Sabina has got to. The whole attack is certainly not as potent as the 1983 edition, but there is no longer any need for West Indians to be ashamed of their bowlers because they now have a group who are as good as anyone else’s bar South Africa for sure and maybe India.

And while the batting leaves something to be desired, it can no longer be said that collectively they lack grit. I don’t remember ever seeing West Indies make 392 in such stupefyingly dull fashion, especially with the Rock of Guyana only making 20 of them – but I’m certainly not complaining. Turgid though the cricket was as spectacle, it did the heart good to see that this West Indies side is prepared to buckle down when the situation and tightness of the bowling demand it.

The terms of trade for this series have been radically altered. Being 1-0 down, England are now technically the underdogs, but their paper superiority is such that it is more realistic to see this series as being between equals. However you choose to view the prospects, though, this will be a much more interesting series than most people thought two weeks ago.