Hameed's struggle, and Caribbean capers

Hameed's lean trot
Since getting two centuries in his first two Tests, Yasir Hameed has lost the art of converting starts: in 14 completed innings since those two hundreds, he has fallen between 16 and 26 an incredible nine times, most recently in the second innings of the Rawalpindi Test. (His scores read 23, 18*, 39, 18, 16, 20*, 21, 17, 80, 3, 59, 91, 23, 19, 16*, 26, 20.) In 18 Test innings, Hameed only has one sub-10 score, but unless he learns to convert his starts, his career average will drop off from its current lofty perch of 49.

Contrast that to the conversion rate of his counterpart at No. 3 in the Indian batting line-up. In his last 31 innings - since the start of the England tour in 2002 - Dravid has gone past ten 24 times, and converted 13 of those into fifties or hundreds (six half-centuries, seven centuries, including four double-hundreds). Little wonder then, that Dravid averages nearly 82 during that period.

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Caribbean capers
After six consecutive failures, Brian Lara finally ended his run-drought in some style, but there were still a couple of England bowlers who could honestly say that Lara didn't conquer them: Stephen Harmison - undoubtedly their hero of the series - and Andy Flintoff only went at two an over against Lara in Antigua when the rest of the bowlers were all being tonked around: Lara helped himself to 50 from 38 balls against Matthew Hoggard, while Simon Jones's 88 balls went for 83.

In fact, Harmison troubled Lara throughout the Test series, not only restricting the runs on the placid St John's pitch, but also nailing his man three times on wickets which had more juice on them. Lara ended up with an average of 21 against Harmison, a record he will want to set right when West Indies travel to England for a return series later this year.

England's fast bowlers may have had far more success that their West Indian counterparts, but Fidel Edwards and co. did have their moments, most notably when bowling to a hesitant and out-of-form Marcus Trescothick, who came out a distant second-best in his battles against both Edwards and Tino Best.

Of course, the West Indian lower-order incompetence with the bat came to the fore once again. Here's what the last four wickets of both teams achieved during the series.

It was a series dominated by the left-handed batsmen from both teams - Lara and Ridley Jacobs topped the averages list for West Indies, while England had Graham Thorpe and Mark Butcher leading the way. Thorpe's hundred at Barbados was also remarkable for the fact that the next highest score was 17 - by Michael Vaughan and Nasser Hussain - that's one-seventh of Thorpe's score. In the history of Test cricket, there are only five instances of a greater difference - in terms of ratio - between the highest and second-highest score.