Misread and outsmarted: How West Indies handed Pakistan victory - Trinidad Guardian

Af­ter putting Sri Lan­ka to the sword, the West In­dies en­tered their two-Test se­ries against Pak­istan with the qui­et swag­ger of a team ready to re­build re­gion­al pride. Cap­tain Ros­ton Chase had bold­ly an­nounced his in­ten­tion to turn home grounds across the Caribbean in­to im­pen­e­tra­ble fortress­es, where vis­it­ing teams come to suf­fer.

In­stead, by the time the sec­ond Test at the Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain con­clud­ed with an eight-wick­et thrash­ing by Pak­istan, where the West In­dies suc­cumbed to some very or­di­nary crick­et, it felt more like some­one had rolled out the red car­pet for the op­po­si­tion, rather than build­ing a fortress.

To be fair, things ini­tial­ly ap­peared to be fol­low­ing Chase’s grand ar­chi­tec­tur­al blue­print down at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do. Win­ning the toss and bat­ting first, the West In­dies looked every bit a side ca­pa­ble of post­ing a mas­sive 400-plus to­tal while cruis­ing com­fort­ably at 231 for 4. But Pak­istan, true to their un­pre­dictable na­ture, fought back to rip through the low­er or­der, tak­ing the last five wick­ets for just 80 runs and dis­miss­ing the West In­dies for 311.

When a team wins the toss and bats first, they must be look­ing at a score of 400 plus. So on a pitch that had some bounce and move­ment, the bowlers need­ed to work hard and put the Pak­istan bats­men un­der pres­sure, and even with­out Alzarri Joseph in the line-up, this West In­dies at­tack is good enough on that type of pitch to make life un­com­fort­able for the op­po­si­tion.

Mind you, this was a Pak­istan side ar­riv­ing in the Caribbean in com­plete in­ter­nal tur­moil. They had just en­gaged in an­oth­er round of mu­si­cal chairs with their lead­er­ship, reap­point­ing Babar Azam to re­place Shan Ma­sood, while leav­ing heavy­weights like Sha­heen Shah Afri­di, Hasan Ali, and Ab­dul­lah Shafique out of the ini­tial squad. They were a team in tran­si­tion, sport­ing a mis­er­able away record, and prac­ti­cal­ly beg­ging to be put away.

When Pak­istan coast­ed to 199 for 3 by the end of day two be­hind Ma­sood’s bril­liant cen­tu­ry and a fifty from Imam-ul-Haq, the eu­pho­ria of the Sri Lan­ka se­ries sud­den­ly felt like an an­cient mem­o­ry. But it was on day three that the West In­dies bowlers came to the par­ty and, en­ter Justin Greaves.

Greaves de­liv­ered a ca­reer-defin­ing spell, tak­ing 5 for 27 to col­lapse Pak­istan from 199 for 3 to 282 all out, sin­gle-hand­ed­ly turn­ing the match on its head. He is the first play­er to bowl five con­sec­u­tive wick­et-maid­en overs in the his­to­ry of the game. Greaves isn’t just the most im­proved bats­man in re­gion­al crick­et; he has of­fi­cial­ly evolved in­to a gen­uine, red-ball Swiss Army knife who grows more lethal with every match.

Nat­u­ral­ly, be­cause West In­dies Test crick­et is un­der some sort of le­gal oblig­a­tion to in­duce as much stress to its fans as pos­si­ble, the sec­ond in­nings saw a hor­ri­fy­ing col­lapse to 93 for 7—a frag­ile lead of just 122. En­ter the gut­sy Shamar Joseph, who swung with pure heart to set Pak­istan a tricky tar­get of 211. The bowlers then re­duced the vis­i­tors to a com­i­cal 71 for 9 be­fore Babar Azam and Mo­ham­mad Ab­bas added a coat of paint to the score­board, seal­ing a dra­mat­ic 90-run vic­to­ry for the Ma­roon caps.

Flushed with vic­to­ry and see­ing Shan Ma­sood (the 1st Test cen­tu­ri­on) ruled out of the sec­ond Test with a frac­tured fin­ger, the West In­dies marched in­to the Queen’s Park Oval seem­ing­ly be­liev­ing vic­to­ry was as easy as tak­ing can­dy from a tod­dler. Over­con­fi­dence, as it turns out, is a ter­ri­ble tac­ti­cal strat­e­gy.

Man­age­ment then pro­ceed­ed to ex­e­cute a mas­ter­class in read­ing con­di­tions com­plete­ly back­wards. His­tor­i­cal­ly, the Queen’s Park Oval track is a mul­ti-act play: the seam­ers get ear­ly en­cour­age­ment on day one, the bats­men en­joy their mo­ment in the sun on days two and three, and by day four, the pitch trans­forms in­to a spin­ning mine­field. Pak­istan recog­nised this and prompt­ly dropped seam­er Mo­ham­mad Ab­bas for spin­ner Sajid Khan, while draft­ing Ab­dul­lah Shafique in­to the line­up to re­place Ma­sood. The West In­dies, on the oth­er hand, stub­born­ly clung to a four-man pace at­tack.

Nev­er mind that 38-year-old Ke­mar Roach had just bent his back for 23 gru­elling overs in the Tarou­ba hu­mid­i­ty with on­ly four days to re­fill his gas tank. Nev­er mind that cap­tain Ros­ton Chase was nurs­ing an in­jured fin­ger that ren­dered him prac­ti­cal­ly in­ca­pable of bowl­ing his off-spin, leav­ing the team with pre­cise­ly ze­ro func­tion­al front­line spin­ners. And nev­er mind that young spin­ner Joshua Bish­op was left sit­ting on the bench watch­ing on a sur­face that screamed for two spin op­tions.

West In­dies ig­nored what­ev­er ad­vice was giv­en to them, sim­ply be­cause I felt they did not want to bat last on the Oval pitch, so they won the toss and de­cid­ed to bat. Win­ning the toss and choos­ing to bat at the Oval to avoid the fourth-in­nings spin mon­ster is log­i­cal enough—pro­vid­ed you ac­tu­al­ly score the 450-plus runs re­quired to dic­tate the game.

Falling 125 runs short of a good first-in­nings score im­me­di­ate­ly hand­ed Pak­istan the up­per hand. Ab­dul­lah Shafique, mak­ing the most of his in­jury-re­place­ment call-up with a su­perb 160 not out, teamed up with Babar Azam for a mas­sive 248-run part­ner­ship that tore the heart out of the West In­dies at­tack.

Even when Pak­istan’s fa­mil­iar frail­ties resur­faced—los­ing their last sev­en wick­ets for just 104 runs—the dam­age was al­ready done. By Day 4, the pitch played true to script, turn­ing sharply and leav­ing the West In­dies’ frag­ile sec­ond-in­nings bat­ting ex­posed to a con­vinc­ing eight-wick­et de­feat. Yes, pitch­es in gen­er­al could be pre­pared bet­ter to suit the West In­dies’ pace at­tack, but the onus is on man­age­ment to as­sess each pitch and plan ac­cord­ing­ly.

In the end, the West In­dies out­smart­ed them­selves out of a se­ries vic­to­ry. They mis­read the pitch, over­worked an age­ing fast-bowl­ing leg­end, starved their at­tack of spin, and paid the ul­ti­mate price against a Pak­istan side whose on­ly con­sis­tent trait is an end­less ca­pac­i­ty for a fight.

The broad­er tragedy, how­ev­er, re­mains the abysmal Test cal­en­dar. Ask­ing a team to build mo­men­tum while play­ing a pal­try four Test match­es in an en­tire cal­en­dar year is like ex­pect­ing a car to win a race start­ing with an emp­ty tank of gas. Both the Sri Lan­ka and Pak­istan se­ries des­per­ate­ly need­ed to be three-Test af­fairs to give this young squad a re­al plat­form to grow.

As for when we will next see the Ma­roon caps don the whites for a Test Match again? Your guess is as good as mine—we might have to wait for smoke sig­nals from CWI head­quar­ters.

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