Edgy England Confronts The Caribbean Challenge

Preview of the West Indies tour of England, 2020

There were bullish talks in the English media of an England whitewash before the last edition of the Wisden Trophy. The tabloids this time have been circumspect of such divinations which in the last meeting proved to be all bark and no bite. Sure, a euphoria over a World Cup triumph can quell any wound, but the drubbing received at hands of the Calypsos, eighteen months back, was more like a rub of salt made worse with a twist of a knife on a wound that keeps resurfacing, the symptoms of which still subsists. While ex-England coach Trevor Bayliss revolutionised the team’s limited over approach, he just kept slapping band-aids on the deep-rooted problems in the red ball game.

After receiving a thrashing from the eighth-ranked Windies, Ireland, at the back of Tim Murtagh’s phenomenal five for, added insult to injury by bundling them out for an embarrassing 85 at the Mecca of Cricket. They then faced the ignominy of the arch-rivals’ successful defence of the urn as England failed to beat Australia in their own backyard for the first time in 18 years. They then toured the Paradise of the Pacific, which didn’t exactly turn out to be one for Jofra Archer as Williamson’s men prevailed over the Brits. Staring at their worst Test year of this century, team England travelled to South Africa, in the quest to pepper their wide-opened wound. Alas, they lost the Boxing Day Test to a side on ventilator support and ended the year at rock-bottom. However, they did show some late resurgence to win the series against a depleted, demoralized South African side which before the particular series had gone eleven months without a Test victory.

England has been at the receiving end of frequent batting meltdowns. They got bowled out for less than a hundred on three occasions in 2019, the last time English batsmen stooped this low was when Lady Diana was still alive. The purists have complained that the red ball team is built around the explosive white ball talent who have been systematically conditioned to an infidel doctrine of smashing the ball out rather than batting the day out. Their win/loss ratio of 0.667 in 2019, their second worst of this century, has raised many eyebrows in the MCC lobby about Joe Root’s captaincy. The vox populi that the mental pressure of the captaincy is showing ramifications on Root’s batting is being shouted down by the polls and pundits. Before taking the job from Sir Alastair Cook, Root averaged 52.80 in Test cricket and was ranked alongside the modern batting greats like Virat Kohli, Steve Smith and Kane Williamson. However, such correspondence has now been shelved given Root’s average as captain stands at 42.9, which is still good returns for any other batsman but unworthy for England’s finest!

Many are giving Windies’s pace battery an honest chance to blow away England’s uninitiated, unsettled top 3 (+1), unsettled which they have been for a time long gone by. Since the retirement of Andrew Strauss in 2012 and later Jonathon Trott in 2015, England’s top 3 has been more nomadic than the Gypsies of Central Europe. That there have been 20 different openers since Strauss’s retirement is a telling story in itself. The problem gets exacerbated at number 4 as the stars seem to align well for the Windies camp (as well as for Joe Root for that matter). England will have to lower their middle-order fortifications as the top gun and number 4 batsman Joe Root is set to miss the first Test as he & his wife are expecting their second child. The top order bares an inexperienced look with nothing much to show against their names – Sibley, Burns, Crawley & Denly will occupy the positions in the particular order. They have featured in just 6, 15, 4 & 14 Tests respectively. Amongst the four batsmen, only Dom Sibley averages more than 34 & they collectively account for a paltry 3 Test hundreds. Windies can breach the Buckingham Palace by making early inroads in this jittery top order, jittery because a Defence against the Dark Arts professor gets more time to spend at England’s Hogwarts than what their Test batsman does at the top order.

Windies can expect some resistance bowling to five and six, firstly due to the impending lack of shine on the ball and secondly because of some batting calibre as well. England’s contemporary legend, Ben Stokes, at number 5, says he is ready to be the “the Scottie Pippen to Joe Root’s Michael Jordan”, referencing to the 1993-94 season of Chicago Bulls when Pippen had to lead the team in Jordan’s absence. Such is his fanfare that if he chooses Prime Ministership over Test captaincy, Britain will oust Boris Johnson, knight Ben Stokes and then give him the chair at 10 Downing Street. It’ll be interesting to observe how the responsibility of being the head honcho affects his batting. Desperate calls are being made by the ginger group in the interest of English Cricket that their premier batsman should be made to focus on his primary skill and that Stokes be made the skipper for the long term. Stokes’ leadership in the first Test might just give us a glimpse of the future. Ollie Pope, who is talked up in England’s cricket circuit, who by many is considered the legitimate successor to Joe Root’s legacy of batsmanship, will come out to bat at 6. He has not let the expectations take the better of him and has shown a streak of brilliance in his young career by scoring 3 fifties and 1 hundred in 7 Tests.

At 7 comes another conundrum, another issue of insecurity, it is the JB vs JB debate which continues to rage! It seems to have temporarily been patched up as Jos Buttler has been appointed the vice-captain for the first Test as Ben Stokes will be the stand-in captain in Joe Root’s absence. The issue is set to take the front seat again after Root’s return. Bairstow got dropped after an unimpressive Ashes but frankly, none of the batsmen’s recent history suggests that they’re good enough to bat at 7 for England. Jos Buttler has just 1 fifty to his name in his last 19 innings whereas Jonny Bairstow has 1 fifty in his last 16 innings. Buttler who replaced Bairstow as the wicket-keeper in the Test format on the promise of better craftsmanship as a batsman has failed miserably as he has just 1 hundred in his 41 match career. Though many will have their perspective on who is a better batsman but when it comes to keeping, none can claim that Buttler is better than Bairstow. If stats are to be appraised, then Bairstow has put up a better show behind the stumps with 2.01 dismissals per innings eclipsing Buttler’s 1.61. In this great hustle, there is a third angle which many with their myopic views fail to notice. It is the young man from Surrey, Ben Foakes, who is in a better nick as a wicket-keeper batsman than both Bairstow and Buttler. Ben Foakes in his 5 match career so far has 1 century and 1 fifty against his name. It may happen that young Foakes might trump both the experienced Samaritans in the squad going into the second and third Test. As for the first Test, it’ll be fascinating to see whether the team management plays one of Bairstow or Foakes as a specialist batsman, but the question is, in whose place – Crawley or Denly?

Before we move onto England’s tail, let’s see how the Windies pace bowling stacks up against England’s top 7. West Indies go into the series with a potent all-round bowling attack. The pace battery features the no.1 all-rounder in Test cricket, captain Jason Holder, who has this instinctive ability to consistently pitch the ball on a 10 pence piece. If the nagging line and length is the captain’s forte, it is the versatility of the experienced Kemar Roach who can swing the ball both ways. He will be eying a personal milestone of 200 Test wickets in this series. Then comes the pace of Shannon Gabriel who according to Windies Coach Phil Simmons, is “as fast as he has ever seen him bowl”. Though there is potential in Chemar Holder, Raymon Reifer & Oshane Thomas, it’ll be Alzarri Joseph who’ll take the 4th seamer position going into the first Test. If Gabriel can bowl fast, then young Alzarri Joseph touted as the future great by the legends of West Indies Cricket can bowl even faster. The English summer of cricket is finally upon us and it brings with it some mind games as collateral. In the bid to unsettle his nerves, Young Joseph, is being looked at as “a bit of breathing space.” The rookie responded with a word of caution for the England side, exclaiming that the mindset of considering him the weak link could, in fact, work in his favour. “Obviously those three guys have a lot more experience than I do. I’d think more often than not, teams would see me as the weaker link. I think my job is to come in and just back those bowlers and keep the pressure on”, Joseph said. “I could use it as an advantage – I know my abilities and they might not know. But once I turn up on the day and get the job done, I know I can get on top of any opponent.”

It’ll not be just pace which will count. Spin is set to play a major role, firstly due to the saliva ban as it will make teams reluctant to go in with an all-out pace attack and secondly because both the venues, Rose Bowl in Southampton & the Old Trafford in Manchester have a history of assisting spin at the business end of the game. The off-spin department comprises of Rakheem Cornwall, who claimed a ten-wicket haul in his last outing against Afghanistan and the adroit Roston Chase. While Chase will be a certainty, it’ll be the toss-up between the off-breaks of Cornwall and the leg-spin of uncapped Nkrumah Bonner. If record archives and experience are gandered at, then Cornwall beats Bonner hands down with a First-Class bowling average of 23.57 which includes 19 five-wicket and 4 ten-wicket hauls when compared to Bonner’s bowling average of 31.44 which includes just 1 five-wicket haul. Though Bonner’s First-Class batting average of 27 may just edge Cornwall’s batting average of 24, it’ll be the skills with the ball that would ultimately count. The only question here is whether the Windies will want to go into the Test match with two off-spinners or will they prefer to mix it up.

Coming back to England’s tail, at 8, they will look to play a spinner for similar reasons previously mentioned. So, this rules Sam Curran out. Moen Ali will be returning to the England Test setup after serving a 10 month-long self-imposed exile, a decision which he says was prompted by lobby’s excessive criticism of his performances. The southpaw announced a break from Test cricket in September last year after losing out on the central contract. “I definitely felt like, while I was playing, that if we lost the game and were 54 all out or 82 all out, it was my shot that lost it or was highlighted more. It was my mistake with the bat. It would always be my face.” Ali said in a conference call with the British media. “For sure, I did fall out of love with the longer format.” Now that Ali is “available to play any sort of cricket,” it’ll be interesting to see if the management puts faith in his mainstream off-spin bowling given that he does bolster the tail or rely on the orthodox, wicket-taking options in left-arm off-spin of Jack Leach or the right-arm off-breaks of young Dominic Bess.

Just like Ali, Leach has been out of the game for a long time but for him, it was a fate-imposed exile. He last played for the Three Lions at Mt. Manganui post which he has just been battling a series of illness and injury. It started with food poisoning in New Zealand which transformed into sepsis. In South Africa, he caught the sickness bug which ran through the England squad before the Boxing Day Test. While others recovered, Leach’s immunity took more time to shake it off as he suffers from Crohn’s disease. He was dispatched back home in the middle of the South Africa series so that he recovers well for the tour of Ceylon. While he did recuperate from the sickness, in another unfortunate turn of event, Leach managed to inflict a tear in his calf while training. Leach did ultimately recover to board the British Airways flight to Colombo but as fate would have it, he missed more matches due to the impending Covid-19 gloom which led to the cancellation of the series. The continued absence of England’s two spin linchpins from the game certainly gives an impression that they’ll be rusty, to begin with, and will take more time to get in the groove, which will invariably play to West Indies’ advantage.

When it comes to the fast bowlers, former England frontline pacer Darren Gough, who served as a bowling consultant for England in their tour of New Zealand, lavished high praise on the current bowling stock. He went on to say “It’s as good as they’ve had since 2005. It’s got everything.” He may not be entirely wrong as there are limited seats and many deserving contenders. Number 9 is yet another riveting contest between the two fastest English bowlers – Jofra Archer & Mark Wood. It has been made clear to Jofra Archer that he cannot take his place for granted now that Mark Wood is fit. What works in favour of ferocious Wood is his recent performance against the West Indies in their last year’s encounter at St. Lucia which can be described as a terror striking sweet chin music dished at 95 miles per hour, wherein Wood claimed his maiden fifer inside eight overs. He bowled at his fastest best in the new year’s Johannesburg test for which he was awarded Man of the Match. “I cannot speak for Jofra but I definitely want to be quicker than him and I’m sure he wants to be quicker than me,” Wood admitted that the desire to outdo one another is a key feature of their friendly rivalry. Though there are promising pace options in Chris Woakes, Jamie Overton, Olly Stone & Saqib Mahmood, and their time will come, but it’ll be the two English heavyweights Stuart Broad and James Anderson who’ll be walking straight into the team at 10 & 11.

Do Windies batsmen have the grit and flair to face these bowling stalwarts in typical English conditions? If overcoming the operational issues of shining the Duke ball is a challenge, then battling the English seamers is even a bigger one. This is where the Windies can either make or break the game. On paper though, it just looks more like a chink in the Calypso’s armour. “West Indies look like they have a decent bowling line up,” former England captain Mike Atherton said on Sony Network. “The question is whether West Indies will get the runs to give those bowlers the ammunition to have a go at England.” In the absence of Darren Bravo & Shimron Hetmyer, who in the wake of the pandemic decided to opt-out of the tour, it’ll be their batting mainstays, Shai Hope & Kraigg Brathwaite who will have to anchor this otherwise frail-looking Caribbean ship.

The seasoned Kraigg Brathwaite will open the innings along with the left-hander John Campbell. Brathwaite would want to capitalize on the feel-good factor from his previous performances in England. It was the back-to-back scores on 134 & 95 at Headingly in the 2017 edition of the Wisden Cup which not only earned him the due recognition of the illustrious Sky Sports commentary panel but also earned him a place in the county team of Yorkshire. Although Brathwaite doesn’t give too much currency to his triumphs in Leeds last time West Indies toured England. “That was almost three years ago,” Brathwaite said. “Looking back at stuff I did I can obviously see things I did well, but that’s history. I have a current job to do here and I’m ready, I’m raring to go.” In the lead-up to the Test series, Brathwaite has taken help from the legendary West Indies opener Desmond Haynes to get into the right frame of mind before he faces the first ball. Campbell, a naturally attacking player, will fondly remember his debut Test series, which happened to be against England last year, where he got plenty of good starts. This time around he wants to convert them and convert them big time.

It’ll be Shamarh Brookes who’ll walk into bat at three. In his young career of 3 Test matches, he has 1 hundred and 1 fifty to show. At the back on an unbeaten 66 in the intra-squad warm-up fixture, Brookes is all set with a belief that “the team who bats the best in this series will come up trumps.” Shai Hope will bat at 4 and would want to mirror his 2017 Wisden Trophy performance. Hope shot to fame, who along with Kraigg Brathwaite, took West Indies to their first Test victory on the English soil in 17 years by championing an extraordinary run chase of 322 at Headingly. Hope became the first man to score twin centuries in a First-Class match at Leeds with scores of 147 and 118 not out. At 5, it’ll be the sturdy batting of Roston Chase, who wants to better his last year’s century against England at home by scoring one in their own backyard. “When you score hundreds in England, I think, as a batsman, people take you more seriously and rate you a bit higher. I am looking to have a good series with the bat, score as many runs as possible. I will not be happy if I do not get at least one century,” ESPN Cricinfo quoted Chase as saying.

At 6, captain Holder will take guard. Like Kraigg Brathwaite, Holder has vital experience playing in English conditions for Northamptonshire. He is the only player in the West Indies squad to have a double century to his name, a fact which English have not been able to expunge from their trepid memory. That double-century had propelled West Indies to a thumping 381 run victory over England in Bridgetown last year. At 7, wicket-keeper Shane Dowrich will want to find the same form he displayed against the Brits at Bridgetown last year, wherein he scored an unbeaten century and starred in a record partnership with captain Holder. His unbeaten 56 in the intra-squad warm-up game would give him some confidence. At 8, extending the tail will be Rakheem Cornwall who has 1 First-Class hundred and 13 fifties to his name. The presence of all-rounders in the tail of the line-up provides a batting depth which matches that of England’s, an advantage that now stands nullified, which only a very few touring parties have managed to do in the recent past.

If the West Indies batting sticks it out to England, it’ll be three-quarters the battle won and will go a long way in winning a Test Series in England, a feat last achieved in 1988 when Viv Richards’ team blanked the hosts 4-0.  It should also be noted that West Indies will be playing a Test match against 11 men and not 20,000 hostile English fans. A situation which has led the likes of Stuart Broad to seek the help of a psychologist to mentally prepare for the new reality. “It’s a worry for me, because I know that I perform at my best as a player under pressure when the game is at its most exciting and when the game needs changing”, said Broad. “International cricket certainly will be more of a mental test to make sure each player is right up for the battle, and I’m very aware of that. I’ve already spoken to our sports psychologist about creating a bit of a mindset around making sure I can get my emotions up to where they need to be for me to be at my best.” West Indies coach Phil Simmons feels that no crowd means advantage West Indies, “The nice part for us is that 20,000 Englishmen raving for England, and that crowd support, it’s not there for them. So that in a way will help us, so it’s good from that point of view.” The wait is almost over for the return of International Cricket, will the Windies turn the table, or will the popular choice prevail? Tune into the game on the 8th of July as both England and West Indies will walk to the middle wearing the ‘Black Lives Matter’ logo on their collars to express solidarity with the movement and to help raise awareness. It remains to be seen whether the West Indies will take the knee.