From Garth Wattley in Kingston
Two wickets in successive balls for Stuart MacGill shortly after two o’clock yesterday afternoon ended the West Indies’ fighting effort in this Digicel First Test against Australia at Sabina Park.
Despite giving as good as they got over the previous four days of this contest at Sabina Park, the extra quality of the world champions showed at crunch time on the final day.
Needing an unlikely 287 runs for victory, the Windies lost by 95.
Stuart Clark was man-of-the-Match with a haul of five for 32 in the second innings which gave him eight wickets for 91 in the match.
He and new ball partner Brett Lee (two for 81), effectively won the match for the Aussies in the first session.
Resuming on 46 for one, the side led by Ramnaresh Sarwan in this match, lost six wickets to Clark and Lee for the addition of 71 runs. It was a slide which proved impossible to recover from.
But Sarwan was not discouraged by the final outcome.
“We have a lot to take from this match,” he said at the post game ceremony, “Fidel bowling very well and Shiv’s hundred. He showed a lot of determination, so it’s important that we try to take a page out of his book and the way he batted and we have to continue to be positive.”
In addition, the Windies skipper noted: “It’s the best I’ve seen us field in the longest while. It’s really good for us and I hope that we can keep it up and get better for the second Test match.”
Ponting too, acknowledged the competitveness of the home side at Sabina.
“We’ve all sat back and had a bit of a look at what the West Indies have done over the last couple of years. And as we saw in our second innings, they are a very capable bowling attack, especially with that new ball,” he said.
“Their batsmen all dug in in this game. Chanderpaul’s innings was obviously outstanding. They’ve got a couple players to come back into their side so if they come back in for the Antiguan Test match I’m sure there’ll be another great game.”
Ambitious hopes of West Indian victory began to be dispelled inside the first half hour of an extended morning’s play, following the early finish because of poor light on the fourth afternoon.
The home side lost overnight batsmen, Sarwan and opener Devon Smith in that time.
In the third over, another outstanding bit of catching, this time by Andrew Symonds, removed Sarwan to make the score 55 for two.
He had made 12, including a square drive off the tall fast medium bowler. But in Clark’s second over, he attempted to play to the on-side, got a leading edge and Symonds, standing at extra-cover, leapt up, failed to hold on to the catch with his right hand, but dived backwards to grasp the rebound with both hands.
The Aussies were not about to give anything away.
Clark and Lee, operating in tandem from the start for an hour and 48 minutes on the trot, exerted tremendous pressure on the West Indian batsmen. Bowling to unorthodox fields designed to exploit the weaknesses of the individual batsmen and curb their strengths, the two most penetrative of the Australian bowlers constantly forced them to make crucial judgments at which balls to play at in the “corridor” around off-stump.
Smith failed his examination when he reached 28.
He was plumb lbw as a man can be when he shouldered arms to a Clarke delivery which would have struck the middle stump: 60 for three. As in the first innings, the first three wickets had gone to him.
First innings standouts Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Runako Morton were in another tight spot again now. But unlike the first innings when they put on 128 together, they could manage just 14 runs this time.
Then Morton (nine), having pulled and driven Lee sweetly for two boundaries in the pacer’s seventh over of the day, found himself on the wrong end of an lbw decision off the fifth ball. Umpire Aleem Dar could possibly have given the batsman the benefit on height.
Clark got back into the action three overs later when Dwayne Bravo pushed him into the hands of Mitchell Johnson standing by the non-striker in a short, straight mid-on position. And then, to seal the deal for Australia, Chanderpaul departed.
Dropped on five by Simon Katich who missed a straightforward chance, the Windies’ main hope got to 11 before he played a Lee delivery off the back foot straight back to the bowler who took the catch.
Denesh Ramdin and Darren Sammy who both failed to score in the first innings lower middle order collapse, now found themselves together with virtually an hour to go in the first session.
At lunch though, they were still together at 117 for six.
They survived the combination of leg-spinner Stuart MacGill and left-arm pacer Mitchell Johnson, the latter producing several deliveries that jumped at the batsmen from a good length.
After the break, Ramdin (36, five fours) and Sammy (35, five fours) pushed on manfully until another piece of misjudgment broke them up after a seventh wicket stand of 67.
A concerned Ponting had summoned back Lee with the score 149. And in his first over, Ramdin was beaten to the non striker’s end by MacGill’s direct hit as he played straight to mid-on.
Thirteen runs later, Sammy became Clark’s fifth victim, lbw in the second over of a new spell.
At 172 for eight, it was merely a question of when the final rites would be performed. After Darren Powell had struck a spirited 27 with six fours, those rites came quickly.
MacGill removed him and Amit Jaggernauth in straight balls, the latter unjustly so, having been adjudged caught bat/pad to a ball he never touched.
In the context of the day though, it was not a detail that really mattered.
The Aussies had won long before then.
