For win against desperately poor Windies
HFollow our live coverage of day four at nzherald.co.nz hundreds and show people what we can really do.”
They batted magnificently in that test to push the West Indies to victory after having been poleaxed a week earlier at Edgbaston.
Brathwaite is certainly a rock and a player with form for batting time, but he can’t do it on his own.
There’s an attacking mindset among most of the West Indian batsmen which is thrilling to watch but there’s still plenty of test development to be done with the likes of Shimron Hetmyer, one of two batsmen dismissed late yesterday to a casual drive to mid off.
The West Indies bowlers plugged away determinedly for chunks of the day. Seamer Miguel Cummins, certainly the pick of the bowlers over the two tests, produced one sizzling six-over spell after lunch in which he removed Kane Williamson and Henry Nicholls, had Mitchell Santner dropped by wicketkeeper Shane Dowrich above his head, and clunked the lefthander on his helmet too.
But the fielding was simply dreadful. Boundary work was shoddy, there were overthrows and misfields you would berate a first XI for making.
That is one area teams can make highly skilled and Ross Taylor last night admitted the bowlers had toiled honestly and with determination. However, they were let down in the field.
How often has a second innings declaration been made late on the third day of a test? Not often but this game has moved swiftly.
If you’ve got tickets for day five tomorrow you’re unlikely to need them based on what’s been seen so far.
I think what we are wanting is a lot of fight and to really show what we can do. Toby Radford, Windies batting coach
Taylor is now No 56 on the alltime test runmakers list. He climbed over Australian great Neil Harvey, South African Herschelle Gibbs, India’s Mohammad Azharuddin, West Indian Rohan Kanhai and Aussie leftie Mike Hussey in the course of his century yesterday.