Shamar Joseph adheres to the fourth-stump channel. Ben Duckett is denied room to free his arms, while the good length is keeping drives at bay. Claustrophobia sets in. The stocky left-hander is, after all, the poster boy of BazBall, with a leave percentage that laughs in the face of Test batting’s age-old maxim. Only a couple of dots have been strung together yet but his itch to score has grown manifold already. It isn’t scratched into relaxation by an engineered boundary through covers. He wants more, not concerned in the slightest about the sucker ball on the way. The trap is laid, and Duckett the dynamo walks right in.
Alas, for West Indies, a wicket eked out on the back of discipline was an exception rather than the norm after Kraigg Braithwaite, rather oddly, asked England to bat first on a featherbed under clear blue skies. The rationale? Perhaps his belief that West Indies’ bowling is a stronger suit than their batting. With a four-pronged pace attack and two spinners of different variety at his disposal, the thought process makes sense too but a performance check reveals that it has more to do with the low bar of batsmanship in the Windies camp right now than their cohesive potency with the ball.
Be it batting or bowling, opening partnerships set the tone for an innings. Alzarri Joseph and Jayden Seales either bowled too full or too short, almost as if allergic to the in-between length. Spraying the new ball around is undesirable anyway, but an exhibit of waywardness takes a criminal connotation when swashbucklers like Duckett are occupying the crease. England galloped to 50 in 4.2 overs – the fastest ever by a team in Tests – notwithstanding the early departure of Zac Crawley.
The pandemonium forced Braithwaite to turn to Jason Holder, the most experienced bowler in the side in the glaring absence of metronome Kemar Roach, who has picked up 61 wickets in 16 Tests against England and earned a feature on the Lord’s honours board in 2017. Even though his military medium speed, tighter lines and the ability to extract bounce necessitated adjustments from Ollie Pope and Duckett, Holder caught the overpitching bug, thereby releasing the pressure that he was doing well to apply in the first place. It was a microcosm of West Indies’ error-strewn pace bowling effort; they were good in patches but consistency, or the lack thereof, meant England were hardly squeezed into a period of attrition throughout the opening day at Trent Bridge.
You are always in the contest as a bowler in this part of the world. Save for New Zealand, the ball generally stops swinging elsewhere once the lustre wears off but as Seales squared up Joe Root twice in spectacular fashion post the 20th over mark, a ripple of information ought to have swept the Caribbean camp. What was the need of the hour? An excellent grouping of deliveries. Just bowl in the right areas and let the pitch do its bit. Unfortunately for the visitors, Seales and Joseph neither had the rhythm nor the patience to play the long game. The stop-start cricket that West Indies engage in as a unit due to administrative and economic reasons could be to blame, but the dearth of strategic finesse in their approach is telling.
Australia had pushed covers out to the fence during the Ashes for Duckett, for he relishes width. West Indies followed suit only after conceding a dozen boundaries that made him the quickest half-centurion for England in Tests after Ian Botham and Jonny Bairstow. He nicked off trying to work the ball into the seductive gap.
Pope has a penchant for scoring in the third man region, yet the man at gully stood in the traditional close-in position all day long, leading to a dropped chance on 46 when Alick Athanaze was beaten for pace as the ball travelled off the bat face. Pope had collected a few streaky runs in that pocket at the start of his innings and looked to slash regularly, so basic brainstorming from the Windies think tank around reaction time could’ve ensured that golden opportunity was converted. Cricket is essentially a sport of fine margins. Reprieved again in the slip cordon on 54, Pope kicked on to make 121.
The lack of optimization in fielding placements was also evident in Braithwaite’s decision to have Seales at backward point later in the day. It is common knowledge that pacers expend a lot of energy and fatigue creeps into their body. To station an exhausted teammate at a hotspot is imprudent, and the lethargy showed in his clumsy, unsuccessful dive to intercept a punch. Joseph, the bowler, stared him down. It had been an off-color outing for the pacers, their 30.3 overs combined leaking 188 runs.
The pair should pluck a leaf out of Kevin Sinclair’s book. The off-spinner was rushed into the attack to give West Indies a semblance of control after the new-ball merchants had let the team down. There was no rough to exploit, but his unwavering accuracy saw England score at 3.4 runs per over in the second hour of the morning session as compared to 7.1 in the first.
Precise bowling is lethal in itself, albeit more so against an eager beaver opposition like England. Their batters express themselves in the middle, voluntarily choosing a high-risk high-reward path. BazBall is a double-edged sword, and episodes of recklessness can be certainly provoked by drying up the runs. Aiden Markram would not lose sleep over facing a maiden, but Harry Brook is prone to.
With 33 Test caps to his name, Joseph is no longer a rookie in the West Indian outfit. He must also develop the virtue of persistence because as an athlete bad days are inevitable. Pope lived a charmed life and appeared ill-at-ease at times but he waded through the rough patches to craft an important century. There will be occasions when a fast bowler wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and rocks up cold to the venue only to embark on a elusive hunt for rhythm and intensity. It is however, in the cauldron of discomfort, that champions not only show up but also figure out a way to perform.
