Bazigaar
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West Indies search for answers
West Indies face their last opportunity to take any silverware from another depressing season when the two-Test series against Pakistan starts in Barbados, tomorrow. Brian Lara has been recalled, but this West Indies team has regressed so badly since the start of the Test series against South Africa, that even his ability to produce the miraculous is unlikely to be enough.
Eight one-day defeats in a row has left West Indies a dispirited group of players - despite all the positive spin by Bennett King and the backroom staff - and the processes which are supposed to have been put in place have gone in one ear and out the other.
The players, even the more experienced ones such as Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan, continue to make basic mistakes, while Shivnarine Chanderpaul cuts a desolate figure as captain. During the ODIs against Pakistan all his post-match interviews were identical - blaming the batting but without having much idea about how to solve it.
The return to Test cricket will allow the top-order to forget about how quickly they are scoring and go back to building an innings. Along with Lara's recall, Devon Smith is also back in the Test fold. He played against South Africa in Guyana but was then dropped once the players involved in the contracts dispute returned.
Selecting a West Indies side is like trying to fit square pegs into round holes. The logical step - if there is such a thing in West Indies cricket - would be for Smith to open with Chris Gayle and Wavell Hinds to continue in the middle-order, where he finished the one-day series.
Five front-line seamers have been named in the squad, with just three set to make the final XI, to be supported by Dwayne Bravo's skiddy medium-pace. It would be pointless to include Ian Bradshaw in a Test squad, for the first time after 30 ODIs, if he isn't to play, and his left-arm seamers will add some valuable consistency. West Indies' inability to dismiss teams this season has shown that trying to blast out opponents is futile, so Corey Collymore is a better bet to frustrate the naturally attacking Pakistan batting order.
Fidel Edwards always gives 100% and should edge out Daren Powell, who for all his hustle and bustle has not produced the goods, and Reon King, who is a confidence bowler - without any confidence.
Pakistan, on the other hand, are going into the Test with their confidence sky-high. However, they will be without Inzamam-ul-Haq, as he serves his one-Test ban for showing dissent against India at Bangalore. Younis Khan, who led Pakistan in the final ODI when Inzamam was injured, will captain a Test for the first time.
Inzamam's absence creates a vacancy in the middle-order, which will give Bazid Khan the opportunity of a Test debut following his 66 in the final ODI in St Lucia. If Bazid is selected he will become the third generation of his family to play Test cricket. His uncle, Jahangir Khan, played four Tests for India in the 1930s and his father, Majid Khan, played 63 Tests for Pakistan, captaining three of them before becoming an administrator.
Pakistan's varied bowling caused plenty of problems during the one-day games, the spinners, in particular, tying the West Indies middle-order in knots. Danish Kaneria did not get a game in the one-day series but is rapidly becoming the second best legspinner in the world, behind Shane Warne, and has an excellent googly to use against West Indies' clutch of left-handers.
Shahid Afridi will provide support in the spin-bowling department, while the increasingly impressive Rana Naved-ul-Hasan will spearhead the new-ball attack. With Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Sami missing through injury the pace attack does not look especially threatening, but the West Indies top-order will underestimate Naved at their peril.
Pakistan are a side moving forward rapidly, while West Indies are going in reverse just as quickly. This Test will be the last game staged at Kensington Oval before it is demolished and rebuilt for the World Cup. Sadly, their can be no such quick fix for the West Indies but there is no time like the present to start the rebuilding.
West Indies (probable) 1 Chris Gayle 2 Devon Smith 3 Ramnaresh Sarwan, 4 Brian Lara, 5 Shivnarine Chanderpaul (capt), 6 Wavell Hinds, 7 Dwayne Bravo, 8 Courtney Browne (wkt), 9 Ian Bradshaw, 10 Fidel Edwards, 11 Corey Collymore
Bazigaar
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bad news:
Youhana set to miss second Test
Youhana is Pakistan's second most senior player Pakistan batsman Yousuf Youhana will miss the second Test against West Indies after visiting his ill father. But captain Inzamam-ul-Haq is set to return after serving a one-match ban for excessive appealing.
Youhana returned home on Saturday and said: "I don't have enough time to make it back to Jamaica.
"My father was very ill and I want to be close to him at this time. I don't think I would have been able to concentrate on my cricket."
Pakistan felt the absence of their two most senior batsmen heavily in Barbados, where they were bowled out for 144 in the first innings.
They were four down for 113 runs in their second innings going into the fourth day, chasing a notional target of 573 for victory.
Tino Best has been recalled to the West Indian squad for the second Test against Pakistan at Kingston, as a replacement for his fellow Barbadian Fidel Edwards, who suffered a strained hamstring during their 276-run victory in the first match at Bridgetown.
Best is the only change to the side that ended West Indies' run of 10 defeats out of 12 in all forms of the game this season. Edwards will be sidelined for at least ten days, but Ian Bradshaw has fully recovered from the viral infection which ruled him out of the first match. Dwayne Bravo, meanwhile, is undergoing treatment on an ankle injury.
West Indies' convenor of selectors, Joey Carew said he was "very elated" about the first-Test victory and hoped that it was a sign of better things to come. "The team played hard and got the rewards for their efforts," he said. "I agree with coach that a lot of work still has to be done but there is a little light at the end of the tunnel."
West Indies squad Shivnarine Chanderpaul (capt), Chris Gayle, Devon Smith, Wavell Hinds, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Brian Lara, Dwayne Bravo, Courtney Browne (wk), Corey Collymore, Daren Powell, Reon King, Ian Bradshaw, Tino Best.
The last time Pakistan won a Test match in the Caribbean, Salman Butt - the youngest member of the likely playing XI - was not even four, and that says enough about the challenge that Inzamam-ul-Haq and his side face at Sabina Park against a rejuvenated West Indies side. Mere weeks after being trounced by South Africa, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and his embattled crew administered a drubbing of their own in Barbados, and the dent to the Pakistani psyche would have been far worse but for Shahid Afridi's rage against the dying light on the fourth day.
Unfortunately for Pakistan, most of the fighting spirit in Bridgetown was confined to the dressing room and the showers - if leaks from the dressing room are to be believed. It was a sad state of affairs for a team that had accomplished wonders in India by dint of sheer hard work and a refreshingly united approach.
Deprived of the services of Inzamam, to suspension, and Yousuf Youhana - back home tending to his ailing father - the Pakistani batting was a shambles on a shirtfront at the Kensington Oval, a surface where the incomparable Brian Lara caressed and bludgeoned his way to 178 from just 172 balls. After that debacle, Yasir Hameed and Bazid Khan will make way as Inzamam returns, along with Shoaib Malik, who has served out a ridiculously light punishment for throwing a domestic game.
Pakistan were undone in the first Test by the slingshots of Fidel Edwards - whose subsequent breakdown has seen him replaced by Tino Best - and the seemingly innocuous offspin of Chris Gayle, and also by their own refusal to pick Shoaib Akhtar.
On a placid pitch where only extreme pace looked likely to breach a batsman's defences, neither the tireless Rana Naved-ul-Hasan nor the gangly Shabbir Ahmed look remotely like running through a side, and neither offered even a smidgen of the intimidatory air that Shoaib brings with him. He may have days when he's a liability, but as Matthew Hayden and Darren Lehmann - both know a bit about the art of batting - would testify, he can be frightening when in the mood.
The bowling travails were worsened by the contempt with which Lara treated Danish Kaneria. Before the tour, Inzamam had talked of Kaneria being his trump card, but Lara - who has pulverised as great a spinner as Muttiah Muralitharan - quickly set about showing that it's one thing to talk the talk, and quite another to walk it.
Ominously for Pakistan, West Indies romped to victory with only Lara and Chanderpaul - utterly assured, and as ugly as ever during his second-innings 153 - making sizeable contributions. The likes of Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Wavell Hinds will be anxious not to miss out if Sabina Park offers similar batting delights.
There has been Jamaican delight in plentiful measure for West Indies down the years. Since the genesis of the pace quartet in the mid-`70s, they have lost only thrice here - twice to England (1989-90 and last year) and once to Australia (1994-95). That last defeat, masterminded by the gutsy batting of the Waugh twins was possibly the most epochal result of the modern era, heralding the definitive shift in cricket's balance of power.
Pakistan themselves would do well to be blissfully ignorant of history. In their first outing here, in 1957-58, a young Garfield Sobers reel off an undefeated 365 as the hosts strolled to victory by an innings and 174 runs. Almost 20 years later, a brave second-innings hundred from Asif Iqbal and eight wickets from the peerless Imran Khan weren't enough to prevent a 140-run hammering. After the fiasco of Barbados, perhaps they can look to Jamaica's most famous son for succour. After all, Robert Nesta Marley did inspire a whole generation with Get up, Stand up.
Bazigaar
Age: 124
8282 days old here
Total Posts: 40761
Points: 0
Location:
Israel, Israel
shahrukh khan said:
i hope pak wins the toss & batting first
nope...i think pak should bat second...that;s what i think...cuz pak don;t really have any main strike bowlers at the moment...so get the target first..and then let our batsmen decide how to achieve it..cuz at the moment...pak's batting is stronger then bowling - even though it failed in first match but with inzi and shoaib back...it does becomes strong...but then again...we again gotta deal with lara...he;s just too good...once he gets going...phew...no one comes close to him..truely prince of cricket...brian lara
pakistan ka band baj raha hae so far...it;s hard to win this one now...atleast if we draw this and win 2nd..we can still win series
