Hope, Greaves lead strong response from Windies against Sri Lanka - Trinidad Guardian

Shai Hope, left, and Justin Greaves, right, rescued the West Indies with a 174-run stand for the fifth wicket against Sri Lanka.

ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Un­beat­en half cen­turies from Shai Hope and Justin Greaves have al­lowed West In­dies to claw back in­to the sec­ond Test match against Sri Lan­ka hav­ing been on the back­foot for the first two days of the con­test.

With the Windies in se­ri­ous dan­ger at 144 for four at one stage, Hope and Greaves shared an un­bro­ken part­ner­ship of 174 runs for the fifth wick­et to car­ry them to safe­ty at 318 for four at the end of the third’s day play at the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um on Sun­day.

It has left them trail­ing Sri Lan­ka’s mam­moth first in­nings to­tal by 229 runs, but more im­por­tant­ly, brought them with­in arm’s reach of avoid­ing the fol­low-on head­ing in­to Mon­day’s penul­ti­mate day of ac­tion.

Be­gin­ning the day on 58 for one, John Camp­bell and Kavem Hodge con­tin­ued from where they left off the pre­vi­ous day, with Camp­bell im­press­ing with his stroke play.

He pulled pac­er Asitha Fer­nan­do over deep mid­wick­et for six and fol­lowed with a bound­ary off the next ball to move in­to the 40s.

Camp­bell then brought up his fourth Test half cen­tu­ry in scin­til­lat­ing fash­ion by pulling Mi­lan Rath­nayake in front of square for an­oth­er bound­ary two overs lat­er.

The pair looked set to take the Windies to lunch un­til Camp­bell threw his wick­et away try­ing to hit a bounc­er from Asitha Fer­nan­do out of the ground, but on­ly got it as far as the field­er at deep mid­wick­et to be dis­missed for 72 off 154 balls, to make the score 122 for two.

Sri Lan­ka struck im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the break, when Pra­bath Jaya­suriya had Amir Jan­goo caught at short leg for just nine and he al­so end­ed Hodge’s wretched in­nings of 31 runs off 139 balls nine runs lat­er when he had him caught be­hind, to re­duce the Windies to 144 for four.

Still in need of an­oth­er 206 runs to avoid the fol­low-on, the West In­dies were res­cued by the part­ner­ship be­tween Hope and Greaves.

It al­most end­ed as soon as it start­ed when Greaves dart­ed for a quick sin­gle af­ter dri­ving a de­liv­ery from Jaya­suriya to mid-on, but the throw bare­ly missed the stumps with the bat­ter well short of his ground.

Hope, who missed the open­ing Test due to a shoul­der in­jury, was in fine nick from the start of his in­nings, with none of Sri Lan­ka’s bowlers caus­ing him any dis­com­fort on a flat pitch.

They car­ried the score to 219 for four at tea, with Hope un­beat­en on 38 and Greaves on 36.

Hope reached his sev­enth Test half-cen­tu­ry soon af­ter the re­sump­tion by clip­ping Isitha Wi­je­sun­dara through the on­side for a cou­ple of runs, with Greaves not too far be­hind, ar­riv­ing at his sec­ond Test half-cen­tu­ry with a sin­gle off Fer­nan­do.

Hope did have a ner­vous mo­ment when he in­side edged a de­liv­ery from Wi­je­sun­dara be­hind to the wick­et­keep­er, but he was un­able to hold on to the tough chance.

From there though, it was smooth sail­ing for the duo, with both play­ers end­ing the day in sight of cen­turies on their way to post­ing the best fifth-wick­et part­ner­ship for the West In­dies against Sri Lan­ka in Tests.

Hope has so far scored 86 runs off 173 balls with nine fours, while Greaves is un­beat­en on 85 off 162 balls, com­pris­ing 10 bound­aries.

For Sri Lan­ka, Fer­nan­do (2-74) and Jaya­suriya (2-77) have both tak­en two wick­ets.

SRI LAN­KA 549-9 dec’d. vs WEST IN­DIES 318-4 in 111 overs (Shai Hope 86 not out, Justin Greaves 85 not out, John Camp­bell 72, Kavem Hodge 31, Bran­don King 17; Asitha Fer­nan­do 2-74, Pra­bath Jaya­suriya 2-77).

231 runs with six wick­ets re­main­ing.

Um­pires: Ah­san Raza, Paul Reif­fel.

Re­serve Um­pire: Deighton But­ler.

Match Ref­er­ee: Jav­a­gal Sri­nath.

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