Woeful Windies and Pietersen's run-fest

England's 3-0 series win against West Indies means they are now on a 16-match unbeaten streak against them, a far cry from the sequence in the mid-1980s when West Indies thrashed them ten times in a row. England have won 13 of those 16 games, and have bettered their previous-best unbeaten run of 13 Tests against West Indies from 1954 to 1960. West Indies still hold the record for the longest undefeated stretch in Tests between the two teams - they remained unbeaten against England for 29 matches between 1976 and 1988.

Talking about streaks, West Indies have now played 20 Tests without a win while England haven't lost a series at home since the 4-1 Ashes drubbing in 2001.

The loss by an innings and 283 in the second Test at Leeds was the worst defeat for West Indies in Tests. The previous worst performance was also against England, fifty years ago at the Oval.

Apart from Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Dwayne Bravo, the West Indian batsmen hardly tested the England bowlers. The lack of application to stay at the crease is best reflected in the fact that the side could not muster a single century partnership. The average partnership per dismissal for West Indies was a measly 28.60, compared to England's 49.07. The English batsmen were involved in eight stands of a hundred or more. The runs scored per wicket in the series is the second-highest for England in any series against West Indies.

Incidentally, Dwayne Bravo has not tasted team success in the 23 Tests he's played so far. West Indies have lost 16 of those matches and drawn seven. Daren Ganga, who captained the side in the last two Tests, had a wretched run in England, scoring 105 runs in the series at an average of 15. After scoring 80 in the first Test at Lord's, Ganga had scores of 5,9,5,0,0 and 6. He was adjudged lbw in five of the seven innings in which he was dismissed. In 81 innings so far, Ganga has had 31 single-digit scores. He has managed to go beyond 30 only 25 times, with 9 fifties and three hundreds.

The insipid West Indian bowlers did no better than the batsmen, the only highlight being Darren Sammy's debut performance at Old Trafford. With nine wickets at 34 apiece, Fidel Edwards was the most successful bowler apart from Sammy, though he conceded 4.92 runs per over. In fact, not only did the West Indian bowlers struggle for wickets, they even failed to restrict the runs: Corey Collymore was the most economical of the lot, and he too went at 3.48 runs per over.

Most of the England batsmen enjoyed themselves in the middle, but Kevin Pietersen relished the attack more than the others, amassing 466 runs at an average of 66.67. His 226 at Headingley was the highest for an English batsman since Graham Gooch's 333 against India in 1990. Pietersen's strike-rate was 76.51, and he joined Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff and Les Ames as the only English batsman to have scored more than 400 runs in a single series at a strike-rate of over 75.

Matt Prior had a dashing start to his Test career with an unbeaten 126 in his first Test at Lord's. Prior's average of 64.80 is the second-highest for an English wicketkeeper in a Test series, behind Les Ames's average of 67.80 against the South Africans in 1938-1939.

Prior also had a match aggregate of 147, the second-highest for a wicketkeeper on debut. His century is also among the fastest hundreds on debut.

The bowling honours went to Monty Panesar and Ryan Sidebottom, who picked up 23 and 16 wickets respectively in the series. Stephen Harmison also bagged 16 scalps, but his average of 34.25 per wicket was far higher than Panesar's 18.69 and Sidebottom's 19.68. Surprisingly, Harmison sent down 150.1 overs during the series, higher than any other bowler from both sides.

But the standout performer during the tournament was Chanderpaul. In the absence of Brian Lara and even Ramnaresh Sarwan, Chanderpaul took charge, scoring 446 runs, twice compiling unbeaten centuries when the rest of the batting fell apart.

Chanderpaul's heroics also made him one of the most successful batsmen in England. In 19 innings (11 matches) in England, Chanderpaul has scored 1090 runs at an average of 77.85, the third-highest average for a batsman having played a minimum of 10 innings in England. Chanderpaul is only behind Sir Don Bradman and Douglas Jardine.

In the Old Trafford Test, 167 extras were conceded, the second-highest in a match. The highest number of extras were conceded in the Bridgetown Test between West Indies and Pakistan in 1977, a match which had 103 runs in no balls.