Wake up call for West Indies

West Indies have won their first series against serious opposition for five years. For anyone who wishes West Indies cricket well, celebrations are in order. Let’s all have a rum punch or two and dance for joy.

And then let’s wake up and assess what has really been achieved.

Some people were offended that in my last piece I said that England had been slightly the better side, as if winning a series automatically confers superiority, but England themselves are no strangers to winning series against better teams. With a little luck and a lot of grit, England beat a massively superior South Africa in 1998, won in both Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 2000-01 and beat Australia in 2005, but only in the last case was anyone deceived that the better side had won.

England are only now recovering from the self-deception which followed that Ashes win; West Indies will make more progress faster if they don’t allow an upset victory to distract them from the serious business of building their side.

A year or so ago, West Indies ambushed a complacent South Africa in the First Test of a series which they went on to lose as the home side recovered their true form. This time, after mugging an equally complacent and ill-prepared England in the first match, they were able to hang on and stave off defeat in the other games and thus take the series. It was not pretty to watch - but then rearguard actions never are, however much honour and even glory we bestow on defenders like those at Thermopylae or Rorke’s Drift.

Ramnaresh Sarwan’s magnificent performance would have come as no surprise to someone who had seen his early forays in Test cricket back in 2000 and then gone to live on the moon until now. Back then, the 19- and 20-year-old newcomer looked very much like a superstar in the making. His poise, style, and elegance of technique evoked memories of the teenage Tendulkar playing for Yorkshire, when the future Little Master made no centuries but exuded class. That the mature player should become a run machine reeling off ton after ton was surely only to be expected.

His progress has not been inexorable, however. There have been some highs but also plenty of lows; just before Christmas in New Zealand he was hanging on to a spot by the fingernails of reputation, batting as though he were late for an important appointment. It’s been simple to build a case that he is a flat-track bully – a case for which these performances could be used as further evidence. But he is only 28, so likely to be still short of his peak: time will tell whether he has now graduated to the ranks of top batsmen or merely had an amazing purple patch.

The big surprise was Brendan Nash. A few weeks ago I wrote that replacing Chanderpaul was going to be the most difficult problem any side in world cricket faced, a prediction now shown to be hopelessly wrong by Nash’s excellent impression of a limpet. He doesn’t punish bad balls as effectively as the Guyanese barnacle, but he is as resolute a crease-occupier as you could wish for. The trouble is that he was only supposed to be a stand-in for Dwayne Bravo, whose return to fitness now causes a problem. Bravo, Chanderpaul and Nash all want to bat at six, and putting one of them down to seven effectively commits to a strategy of playing for draws. One of them will really have to fill one of the holes currently being papered over by Smith and Simmons at two and four.

The problem remains that the bowling attack lacks penetration. While much attention was focused on England’s inability to bowl West Indies out twice at the ARG and Queen’s Park Oval, the sobering fact is that in neither match were West Indies able to bowl England out even once. When you take the 'Borebados batathon' into account, Andrew Strauss was able to declare six innings on the trot.

Jerome Taylor and Fidel Edwards have become dangerous bowlers, but there is not a lot else. Suleiman Benn was successful at Sabina Park when England had persuaded themselves that his height made him an extremely awkward customer but ineffective and easily frustrated into bowling rubbish when England changed their minds and played him as if he were mediocre. Daren Powell’s resistance with the bat at the ARG was as irrelevant to whether his bowling merits a place as Robert Croft’s in similar circumstances in 1998, and Lionel Baker’s early showings give little cause for optimism.

It was a mighty effort of collective will for West Indies to hold firm and win the series. They have successfully reached “hard to beat” status, making them at least a competitive side. But this is only base camp; a lot more will be required of them if they are to scale any nearby summits.