Garth Wattley in St John’s
For the first time in 25 games, there was no winner when West Indies met Australia in a Test match.
But Ramnaresh Sarwan may argue otherwise. For a side that had lost 21 of the previous 24 of those contests, yesterday’s draw he and Shivnarine Chanderpaul earned for the Windies at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium yesterday, was as good as victory itself.
The Frank Worrell trophy will remain with Australia who lead 1-0 in the three-match series. But the home side kept their hopes alive of sharing the honours with them.
Set an improbable 372 to win this Second Test after the Aussies declared overnight, Sarwan batted for nearly five and half hours in getting his 11th Test century (128, 18 fours, one six). In doing so, he shared a 143-run fourth wicket partnership with Chanderpaul, who ended the match without being dismissed.
The rock of West Indies batting ended unbeaten on 77 (180 balls, eight fours) in the second innings to go with his 107 not out in the first.
He finished in an unbroken sixth wicket partnership of 30 with Denesh Ramdin (21) as the team reached 266 for five before the match was called off with five overs remaining. The pair had steadied West Indian nerves after Mitchell Johnson and Brett Lee claimed Sarwan and Dwayne Bravo within the first four overs with the second new ball.
Chanderpaul’s match-saving work deservedly made him the Man-of-the-Match. And his skipper struggled to explain Chanders’ value to the team.
“It’s very hard to find words to describe,” Sarwan said after the match. “Over the past three years he’s shown this consistency and he keeps getting better with age. It’s really good for us as a team.”
Yesterday however, Sarwan’s contribution was just as vital to the Windies’ cause. It was match-saving rather than match-winning, in comparison to his 102 in the Second Test against Sri Lanka earlier this season.
But he said: “Obviously both innings were very special.”
West Indies certainly needed the one yesterday.
The first session was a struggle. Both openers and Runako Morton fell cheaply.
With Ponting declaring the Australian innings for the second time in the match, on the overnight 244 for six, the home side had a minimum of 98 overs to chase the 372. But free scoring was difficult from the outset.
Three of the first four overs delivered by Lee and Stuart Clarke were maidens. A boundary, steered to vacant third man off Clark by Xavier Marshall was the only scoring stroke.
Then in the fifth over, Lee removed the disappointing Devon Smith. Struck on the right shoulder off the first ball, the unsettled left-hander fanned at the fourth, also short, and found Mike Hussey waiting at point. Smith failed to score. And Marshall, restricted in playing his favored drives by the adjusted length of the bowlers, could only follow up his maiden Test 50 with five, before he was adjudged caught by wicketkeeper Brad Haddin off the glove by umpire Russell Tiffin. It was a tight decision that after several TV replays, seemed to correctly favour the bowler, Clark.
At 19 for two, a difficult period was ahead for Sarwan and Morton.
They got through the next hour and ten minutes, adding 65 for the third wicket, the runs scored in the main by Sarwan. They came largely off the spinners Stuart MacGill and Michael Clarke and the left-arm pacer Johnson against whom he was not afraid to play the square slash and hook.
But Australia relied mainly on Lee and Clark to make the breakthroughs.
Eventually, therefore, with the total 84, Ponting reverted to his fastest bowler. First ball, he trapped Morton on the back foot, lbw.
Twenty-five minutes before the end of the first session then, the day had reached its critical point.
Early separation of the mainstays of the Windies batting, Sarwan and Chanderpaul, could have meant a hastened end to the game.
But the pair of Guyanese had come to stay a while.
At lunch, Sarwan had already batted a shade over two hours for his second half century of the match—64.
He had extended that stay by another two hours at tea, taken at 161 for three. And in the last over before the break, Sarwan reached a truly patient century, sweeping MacGill forward of square.
He and Chanderpaul, going slow but very steady like the Essequibo River, had done just what their team required: occupy the crease. Ponting used all of his four specialist bowlers, plus Mike Hussey’s slow medium trundlers.
Ironically, Hussey provided one of the few alarms for Sarwan in that time. On 95, he got the benefit of the doubt from umpire Tiffin to a delivery pitched marginally outside off-stump which would have hit middle. Three runs previously, the TV umpire ruled in his favour as MacGill deceived him through the air and wicketkeeper Brad Haddin whipped off the bails. Sarwan’s right foot was barely behind the crease.
This day, the calls were running better for the Windies.
The skipper’s 101 at tea had taken him 181 balls to get, Chanderpaul’s 31, 101 balls.
Their effort had made a draw a distinct possibility, one which was even more likely by the time Sarwan eventually gloved Johnson’s first delivery with the new ball to Mike Hussey in the gully. Just fewer than 17 overs were left in the day.
Lee’s removal of Bravo for his eighth wicket of the match was not enough to spark something really dramatic.
The blond pacer finished with eight for 110, his best match figures in Tests. It was a super effort in unhelpful conditions.
But his skipper Ponting is hopeful that Lee and company will have more to work with for the series finale in Barbados in eight days’ time.
“It’s been a bit of a batsman’s paradise,” he said. “I’m sure when we get down to Barbados there’ll be a little bit more bounce and a bit more assistance for the bowlers down there.”
