Official West Indies Thread

[Plugger35]

Glad to be of service, I haven't been following this test series much but it's good to see Holder rediscovering some batting form.

It's not that I didn't rate him as a batsman but his form dropped off a cliff, now it's Da Silva's form that has dropped off a cliff.

Such is the fickle nature of West Indies cricket.

 

[sabso]

Glad to be of service, I haven't been following this test series much but it's good to see Holder rediscovering some batting form.

It's not that I didn't rate him as a batsman but his form dropped off a cliff, now it's Da Silva's form that has dropped off a cliff.

Such is the fickle nature of West Indies cricket.

Da Silva's form dropping off a cliff is a function of having played against England the previous series.

He averages 50.57 against England and 21.15 against everyone else.

 

[PhatBoy]

In addition to already thinking we’d made a mistake - as had SA for that matter - in picking two spinners after a session and a bit of watching based purely off the pitch I was puzzled when I looked through some of the commentary today to catch up as to why Brathwaite made some of the bowling changes that he did after they were 9 down ie. bringing Motie on (though he ultimately got the wicket) but Joseph at one point had to leave the field with cramp and Seales said tonight in the pre-game that the heat was a huge factor on day 1 in response to an unrelated question so I guess after more or less rotating unchanged between themselves for 40 overs with a bit of help from Warrican it was understandable

 

[PhatBoy]

Ultimately to some degree I don’t suppose 9-10-11 matters THAT much which order they bat in but it’s an ongoing source of bemusement as to why Joseph is batting behind Warrican to some extent and Seales in particular.

They did mention in fairness to Seales that he’s played the Roach role well enough in the past of plugging up an end but Burger is 6’2, left arm, bowling 140 clicks and Joseph comes in and pulls him, square drives him, and then lifts him for six over long on in consecutive deliveries.

 

[PhatBoy]

Rabada shin high full toss outside off
Joseph massive swing miscued to cover on the bounce
Joseph: “Ahhhhh F**K!!”
Ian Bishop: “…….. we apologise to our viewers for what you just heard through your stump mic.”

 

[PhatBoy]

Wow.
Didn’t have high hopes for how this might play out but we might just have an outside chance here yet. 3-5 to start the day - 5-fer for Seales.

We are building a good bowling group, if nothing else. He’s really putting together a good body of work in his career so far, and MOSTLY, he is a little less inclined to bowl the sort of garbage that can impact on the Josephs in between their threatening spells.

61 wickets at 24 in his 14 tests to date, strike rate of 40.

Roach won’t be around for much longer but:

Roach
Alzarri Joseph
Shamar Joseph
Jason Holder
Jayden Seales
Gudakesh Motie
Jomel Warrican

That’s a good rotation to select from

 

[PhatBoy]

Wow, 5-26 and no issues finishing the tail. Wonders will never cease. Great finish by Seales, awesome caught and bowled to get rid of Burger at the end.

Still favour SA just because of how brittle we are but it’s gettable. Need one big score, who the hell will stand up and deliver it

 

[Cleavy]

that 10th wicket partnership in the 1st innings proved vital

 

[PhatBoy]

that 10th wicket partnership in the 1st innings proved vital

Yep. Though so did ours, to be fair. They put on 63, we put on 41 so both teams were guilty: oddly the West Indies have been the most effective team in test matches at cleaning up the tail in the last 4 years I think they said overnight.

Well another underwhelming top order effort but not an unsurprising one and probably a befitting finish to a series between two sides with brittle batting line ups but SA’s has a little more going for it than ours. Can WI selectors PLEASE not use this as an excuse to dump the players they’ve been trying and go back to the noted regular failures.

The bowling is a building block, it gets a tick from the Australian, English and SA series.