Garth Wattley
The West Indies won a Test match yesterday. And the Queen’s Park Oval’s dwellers rejoiced.
“A-men, A-men!”
Words of thanks rang out of the Sir Learie Constantine Stand just after four o’clock, as Devon Smith spanked Muttiah Muralitharan to the extra cover boundary to complete a six wicket win over Sri Lanka.
Witnessing the event were some youngsters who would never have seen the West Indies win a Test here. The last success for the home side at the Oval was against Zimbabwe: eight years and fives matches ago.
Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine made up for that deficiency yesterday though.
Stamping their class on a game delicately balanced for the previous four days of this second and final Digicel Test, the West Indies vice-captain and former skipper gave a lesson in Test match batting and character under pressure.
In three hours and two minutes, they put on 157-runs together for the fourth wicket to wrest the game away from Mahela Jayawardene’s Sri Lankans and ensure their side not only shared the two-match rubber 1-1, but also avoided a first-ever whitewash at home. The stand is a new West Indies fourth wicket record against Sri Lanka, beating the 153 made by Brian Lara and Carl Hooper at Galle back in 2001/02.
Sarwan got his 10th Test ton—102 (251 minutes, 172 balls, 15 fours)—one of his very best. Chanderpaul ended unbeaten on 86 (207 minutes, 140 balls, seven fours).
The match-winning act by the two Guyanese darlings was not a first for them.
Shiv and “Ronnie” both got centuries in 2003 when, facing a series whitewash against Australia, West Indies got a world record 418 to win in Antigua.
The Oval crowd, the biggest of the match, appreciated all that and the fact that their side’s top batsmen had won for their new captain an important victory. As Chris Gayle and his boys went around parts of the ground, soaking up the atmosphere after the match, people from the Trini Posse Stand in the East, to the Dos Santos Stand in the West celebrated with them the West Indies second win in five Tests and only the second against opponents ranked higher than them in eight years.
It was the sheer satisfaction of a tough job completed that had Chanderpaul punching the air like a schoolboy when Smith drove Murali away. It has not been too often that the master Sri Lankan spinner has been bested by Windies batsmen. Certainly not a by a side with no Lara in it.
But his 24.3 overs yesterday brought him only one wicket; it was Sarwan’s via a bat/pad catch to silly point.
It was his second over in one last spell. He had replaced a leg weary Chaminda Vaas. The two Sri Lankan warriors had thrown everything at Sarwan and Chanderpaul. But this day, the willpower of the two West Indians matched their batting craft.
Taking advantage of a relaid strip which played its part in a captivating contest for four days, Sarwan in particular set out to take charge.
The rich form that had produced scores of 80, 72, and 57 prior to this innings did not desert him yesterday.
The silkiness of his driving in the “V” between mid-off and mid-on—with timing as precise as London’s Big Ben—was again a treat. But this time Sarwan also judged very well when and where to play his shots.
“What has been working for me is that I’ve been very positive up front and able to pick the right balls to hit. That is the key to the way I’ve been batting,” he reckoned afterwards.
The sight of him and Chanderpaul racing between the wickets for numerous ones and twos, was also a feature of their record stand. When he reached 50, “Chanders” had counted just two fours.
He was doing the business as usual, milking his runs with expert placement, working his way through his innings in the shadow of Sarwan.
It was work like that which allowed Chanderpaul yesterday to pass Clive Lloyd (7,515) and Gordon Greenidge (7,558) and move up to fourth on the Windies all-time list of top run scorers with 7,559 runs.
His smile when his job was finally done was brighter than the mild afternoon sunshine.
This was a much different time to the morning when West Indies began their pursuit of 253.
Gayle didn’t get his side off to a
