First ball of the Test, Chris Woakes bowling to Kraigg Brathwaite. It pitched a little short, and the West Indies captain dabbed it into the ground and ran. It felt a little ambitious, if only for a moment – by the time Woakes had extended and diverted his follow-through to reach the ball both he and the batters knew the risk had paid off. Was this, perhaps, a sign that West Indies had come out on the front foot, having won the toss, determined to impose themselves on the game?
Mikyle Louis, Brathwaite’s opening partner, pushed his bat unconvincingly at the first ball he faced, left the last four balls of that Woakes over well alone, and took 22 balls to get off the mark. Perhaps not.
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There have been periods in this series when Brathwaite has appeared to be not so much leading this side as dragging it behind him, and the first hour of this game was one of them. Louis was eventually out for 26, and his first series as a Test player continues to be remarkably consistent: no scores under 14 and none over 27, but this was one of his less impressive near-identical innings.
Nevertheless the opening partnership of 76 was the best of the series so far, for either side, and the captain’s half-century was his first for a year, having fallen two and then three runs short at Trent Bridge last week.
Test captaincy can be a lonely job, particularly when you appear at the top of a failing batting lineup. In their first innings in Nottingham West Indies produced two excellent middle- or lower-order partnerships that hauled the side to a competitive total and provided a certain amount of hope, a faint outline of belief, that all is not necessarily lost when the first wickets fall. But even then, and again here, one habit could not be bucked: when Brathwaite falls, others follow.
The number of runs scored between the 31-year-old’s dismissal and the next wicket to fall in the team’s five innings so far this series has been two, five, six, one and none. His departure brings more departures, his wicket is essentially two wickets – and that’s on a good day; on a bad one it precipitates a full-scale collapse.
If that fate was avoided here it was because they benefited from a second captain’s innings.
Jason Holder was eased out of that role after five years at the end of 2020, and seems to have enjoyed the flexibility his newly unburdened life has offered: in the last year he had opted out of both a central contract and a Test tour of Australia. What he had not done was regularly contribute with the bat: this was to be just his third half-century in three years.
“I haven’t really been too worried,” he said of his form. “I feel as though I’ve been getting starts. Starts haven’t been an issue, it’s just carrying on. So it was just a matter for me to, again, dig deeper. It’s been a real sporadic journey for me in the last year and a half in terms of the amount of Test cricket I’ve played, and I just take it as it comes. I’m not really one right now to be milestone-driven. For me, it’s more trying to drive the culture in the group to get us better. I think we need to just continue to move in an upward direction, and that’s my main goal at the moment.”
At 115 for four West Indies found themselves in a dismal and dismally familiar position. At that stage Holder had faced one delivery and scored no runs, but with Joshua Da Silva he set about rebuilding the innings. For a while it was hard work: it took 11 balls for him to score his first run, 18 to score his third. Da Silva, who after a poor match at Lord’s has been one of his team’s most productive and impressive batters in this series, settled quicker.
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Then England brought on Shoaib Bashir, and Holder shifted through the gears. He lifted the spinner over mid-on for four and, next ball, down the ground for six; he pulled Mark Wood handsomely, anticipating the short ball and smiting it through a vacant midwicket. But in short order after he reached his half-century he lost first his batting partner, then his rhythm – between the 61st over and the end of the 68th he faced seven of 44 balls, and watched Da Silva nick a catch through to Jamie Smith off Woakes – and after that his wicket, as Gus Atkinson found a bit of away swing and uprooted his off stump for 59.
In the first two games of this series West Indies produced one innings of more than 400 – the kind that might win a Test match – and three that when added together come to precisely 400 – the kind that generally guarantees losing one. This time their current and former captains combined to give them something vaguely defendable, and gave Brathwaite some reassurance that beyond him there is character and quality.
Now they just need to do it again. “Look, tomorrow brings another challenge and I’m really looking forward to that,” Holder said. “And I’m sure each individual in the dressing room is as well.”
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