Tony Becca
EVERY NOW and again something happens in cricket, in Test cricket, to shut up those who believe that cricket, Test cricket, is a boring game.
On Tuesday, at the Antigua Recreation Ground in St. John's, the Test match, the first Test between West Indies and India, went down to the wire. After five days of action, the Test match finished with West Indies, thanks to their last pair of Fidel Edwards and Corey Collymore, hanging on for a draw after batting, after surviving for 19 deliveries.
It was a great Test, one in which, after nailing India for 241, West Indies, who went on to score 371, were in front at the halfway stage before India, thanks to Wasim Jaffer who turned up with an impressive innings of 212 and Mahendra Singh Dhoni who smashed six sixes while scoring 69, staged a wonderful recovery, scored 521 for six declared, and left West Indies the highly improbable but not impossible target of 392 off 95 overs to win.
APPEARED SAFE
At 67 without loss going towards lunch on the fifth and final day, West Indies appeared safe before they lost three wickets for five runs, at 171 for three after tea. The West Indies again appeared safe before they lost four wickets for 55 runs, and at that stage, with the scoreboard reading 226 for seven, with Ian Bradshaw and Dave Mohammed batting, with only Edwards and Collymore to come and 20.5 overs to go, it seemed all over bar the shouting.
With Bradshaw defending stubbornly, however, with Mohammed doing it his way by attacking the bowlers and with Edwards and Collymore, aided and abetted by words of encouragement and advice from Daren Ganga who acted as runner for the injured Edwards, the West Indies made it home with one wicket to spare.
CURSING THEIR LUCK
While India may be cursing their luck, while they must be disappointed in bowling the entire last over to Collymore and not getting him out and while they also may be lamenting the decision not to include offspinner Harbhajan Singh in their line-up, the West Indies must be and should be happy with their performance even though they failed once again to follow up on their early dominance and although Mohammed, abandoned and left to swim or sink by his captain, was destroyed by Dhoni in an electrifying end to India's second innings.
Captain Brian Lara may well be disappointed, and justifiably so, that his team ended up fighting to save a game that they controlled for half the way. Apart from the fact that they did save the game, however, what was good about the performance by the West Indies was that, unlike so many times in the recent past, they did not surrender.
With Jaffer and his captain Rahul Dravid batting well and India moving towards a huge score, the West Indies bowlers never gave up, and after two disciplined innings by Christopher Gayle and Ganga, a stroke-filled gem by Shivnarine Chanderpaul, and despite the disappointing way that Denesh Ramdin got out, towards the end of the match the tail-enders, the bowlers, also never gave up.
STUCK TO THEIR TASK
Led by Bradshaw with support from Dwayne Bravo, the bowlers stuck manfully to their task, and when their turn came to bat, they stood their ground in defence of West Indies cricket.
Every day will not end like it ended on Tuesday when the West Indies escaped defeat. Some days, in similar situations, the West Indies will lose. What is important, however, is how well they fight, and despite a few catches that got away in India's second innings, they did put up a fight, a good fight at that, throughout all five days of the Test match.
That is the kind of spirit which, even without the coming of another Gary Sobers, another Viv Richards, or another battery of fast bowlers, will take West Indies cricket back to the top, or near to the top, and which will make West Indians proud and happy.
