Hapless Bangladesh sink to record low in West Indies

Tourists bowled out for 43 in first innings with Roach taking 5 wickets

Kemar Roach led the demolition of Bangladesh with a five-wicket haul as the tourists were dismissed for 43, their lowest total ever in Test cricket, before lunch on the opening day of the first Test against the West Indies at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua on Wednesday.

By stumps, the West Indies top order built on that dominant bowling effort in reaching 201 for two, a lead of 158 runs with eight wickets in hand.

Opener Kraigg Brathwaite played his usual sheet-anchor role to perfection in compiling an unbeaten 88 from almost five hours at the crease. He put on 113 for the first wicket with Devon Smith (58), while Kieran Powell stroked 48 in an 81-run stand before falling just before the close of play. Bangladesh’s score, apart from being their lowest Test innings total and lowest for any Test team in the Caribbean, was also the second shortest first innings of a Test match — 18.4 overs — in the game’s 141-year history, lasting just one delivery more than Australia’s dismissal for 60 off 18.3 overs by England at Nottingham in 2015.

Greentop challenge

Put in to bat on the greenest surface seen in 10 years of Test cricket at the venue, the Bangladeshis were no match for the quality of the West Indies fast bowling led by Roach, who claimed the first five wickets for eight runs in the space of 12 deliveries despite appearing to be troubled by a muscular strain behind his right knee.

Bangladesh’s bowlers were made to look pedestrian in the conditions and their plight was worsened by chances put down off both Smith and Brathwaite.