FOR all the several days of depression the West Indies have endured across the cricketing globe these past few years, none was as wretched as the first day of the second Cable & Wireless Test yesterday.
Nor was any one more utterly predictable as Australia amassed 391 for three off the 90 overs, a pasting excessive even by recent West Indian, if not Australian, standards.
With Ricky Ponting resuming this morning at 146, Adam Gilchrist as his intimidating partner and the insatiable captain Steve Waugh to come next, prospects for the second day are similarly daunting.
Australia’s position was based on the untroubled, if notchanceless partnership of 315,an overall third wicket record,between Ponting and the left-handed Darren Lehmann who turned his maiden Test hundred into 160 before he was out four overs to the end.
They took full toll of bowling limited by timid selectors to three specialists and, on an easy-paced pitch, as feeble as any in international cricket at present, Bangladesh not excluded.
Incapable of sending down an over without a half-volley or long-hop in it, it was belted for three sixes and 49 fours.
Merv Dillon, favoured by two generous LBW decisions from the dreaded Asoka deSilva that accounted for the left-handed openers Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden within the first hour, and the left-armer Pedro Collins were no more threatening than they were in the first Test.
Vasbert Drakes could not find the consistency of length and line that earned him five wickets in Australia’s first innings at Bourda and Marlon Samuels’ casual off-spin and the medium-pace of David Bernard, one of two debutants, and Wavell Hinds were well short of Test standard.
The upshot was the plethora of boundaries that delighted the few hundred, noisy Australians and silenced the rest of a crowd of around 15,000. No more than 20 deliveries authentically beat the bat.
Ponting ended the hot, sunny day with a pulled six off Bernard’s long hop, 19 fours in all directions and his 16th Test hundred long since in the book to follow his 117 at Bourda in the first Test a week ago.
Lehmann, at 33 making up for lost time in the wilderness of Australian cricket, passed his first hundred in his 10th Test and seemed likely to turn it into a double before he was finally given out off an edge to debutant wicket-keeper Carlton Baugh off Drakes four overs to the end.
A six off Samuels and 21 fours mainly from cuts and off-drives were his main scoring shots
It was 95 runs after umpire Rudi Koertzen failed to detect an even thicker deflection to Baugh off Drakes and 143 after Dillon’s wild, overhead return to Baugh from midon botched a clear run out chance just after lunch.
They were two of the four misses that further undermined the West Indies effort.
The others were Samuels’ low, two-handed spill at first slip off Dillon when Ponting, driving, was 37 and the total 137 and the diminutive Baugh’s leaping leg-side attempt to grasp Lehmann’s top-edged hook off Dillon when he was 118 at 305.
Already one down in the series against the game’s current powerhouses and with one of the youngest and least experienced teams they have ever put in the field, the West Indies were further committed to their inevitable fate by three factors even before a ball was bowled.
Half-hour before the start and after an unconvincing, on-field fitness test, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, along with captain Brian Lara the only one in the team with more than 30 Tests to his name, declared himself unavailable.
He cited continuing discomfort from his left-knee that was struck in his 69-ball first Test hundred nine days earlier and obliged him to use a second innings runner. The ailment had to be truly serious to keep a batsman in such prime form from playing a crucial Test.
It was an immediate psychological jolt and forced a hasty restructure of the eleven.
Sir Viv Richards and his panel had already diminished the limited firepower at their disposal overnight by omitting the fiery newcomer Tino Best, the only one in their original 14 with genuine pace.
They now compounded the error by replacing Chanderpaul with the batting all-rounder David Bernard, on debut, instead of another rookie, Omari Banks, the only practising spinner.
It reduced the bowling staff to three specialists, with the flimsy assistance of Samuels and Bernard to confront batsmen with 67 Test hundreds between them.
The hat-trick of misery was completed by the toss.
It favoured Steve Waugh so that Australia had first use of as favourable a batting surface as Queen’s Park has produced for years.
Langer and Hayden set the pattern for what was to follow in the first hour with nine boundaries between them in the first 10 overs. Langer took four successive fours in the same over off the struggling Collins, a pull, two cuts and a drive.
Dillon, several mph below his top pace of the high 80s, probed at the two left-handers from over the wicket and had two lbw shouts correctly rejected.
But the susceptible deSilva, unable to resist the inclination to slowly raise the finger, accepted the next two to despatch Langer and Hayden to deliveries pitched outside leg-stump in successive overs. He had a poor match at Bourda and started badly here as well.
It was the last joy the West Indies had for the next five and a quarter hours as Ponting and Lehmann did much as they pleased against the hapless bowling and fielding that became increasingly ragged.
The two Australians, one right-handed, slim and classical in method, the other left-handed, heavy-set and ungainly in execution, chased each other to their hundreds and arrived there in the same Dillon over quarter-hour into the final session.
Ponting’s rare edge to the third man boundary off the first ball raised his off 151 balls. Lehmann followed with a cut four off the last ball, his 160th ball.
They seemed set for the night when Lehmann fell. Ponting and Gilchrist set out in the morning with the second new ball due. It is the one encouragement for the West Indies.