Big Ben strikes again
Stokes saves England from day one disaster at Headingley
What a difference a strike bowler makes. West Indies brought Shannon Gabriel back for the second Test and bowled England out for only 258, before leaking through to the close for the loss of only one opener, still 239 behind.
This Gabriel is no angel. He is one bull of a man. For two or three spells – before he flags – he is fit to stand alongside some of the West Indian fast bowlers of the 1980s, similar in his physique and speed to Wayne Daniel, or Sylvester Clarke, or others who made teeth rattle inside a batsman’s helmet.
Gabriel, who reached 90mph, dismissed Alastair Cook cheaply, caught at third slip off an involuntary edge, a blow from which England’s batting only partially recovered. Their captain Joe Root made a fifty for the 12th consecutive Test, thus equalling the world record of AB de Villiers, and their vice-captain Ben Stokes scored his sixth Test century, but England were still dismissed for a chastening total – chastening because it has made a West Indian victory an outside possibility, but all the more so because Australia possess more than one man of Gabriel’s pace.
Root and Stokes are the two youngest members of this England team but the positions of responsibility sit well on them. If Root was too ambitious about sweeping a wide leg-break, Stokes accelerated smoothly to score exactly 100 off 124 balls, his second Test century of the summer. It is misleading that his batting average is 35, or rather a reflection of his sheer disdain for recording not outs – only one in his 67 innings.
Kemar Roach was transformed by having Gabriel at the opposite end, and by pitching a fuller length than he had at Edgbaston, so he moved the red ball around more than the pink one had.
Not only did Gabriel of Trinidad and Roach of Barbados take four wickets each, both also had two chances missed off their bowling – the beneficiaries including Root, when he had scored only eight, and Stokes when he made only nine, and then again on 98.
Nonetheless, overall, it was an effort of which West Indies could be proud.
Gabriel set the revised tone, Roach backed him up, and even if all the fielders did not join in, the tourists made a real contest of this match instead of the one-sidedness of Edgbaston – and that will apply even if their batting should buckle on the second day.
The most disappointing feature of England’s batting was that none of the three cubs could feed themselves, again, and thereby grow.
At Edgbaston the lions who sustained England had been Cook and Root with their double and single centuries. Here it was Root and Stokes who, more briefly, gorged themselves on the two West Indian spinners, who conceded 86 runs from 18 overs. But Mark Stoneman, Tom Westley and Dawid Malan could not follow their example.
Any explanation for why Root is the only specialist batsman to have established himself in the England Test side in the past five years has to be multifaceted.
Cook, after all, does not sweat so it cannot be the case that all his partners at the wicket and in the dressing-room cannot live with his body odour – and the opening position has been the one which has most defied solution, even more than three and five.
The tempo of modern batting, in the T20 era, has to be one major explanation for the failure of all the post-root candidates to establish themselves.
Stoneman aimed an unchecked drive at the last ball of Roach’s eighth over in his opening spell, when predecessors of an earlier age would surely have read the situation and waited for a change bowler before thinking of attack. Roach did have one more over but only because Stoneman had inside-edged to the keeper.
At least Stoneman looked the part of an opener until he got out. The same cannot be said of Westley as a No3. He played and missed so often on his Oval debut that the law of averages has caught up: from 25 and 59 on his debut, his scores have regressed to 29, nine, eight and three. He has tried to play straighter but he is still missing straight balls.
The next question is how batsmen can so prosper in the championship as to reach the England side with a technical flaw such as Westley’s or footwork as indecisive as that of Keaton Jennings, who was called in as cover for Cook when he reported an injured knee.
The standard of pace bowling used to be bolstered by overseas players in the 1980s, often West Indians like Daniel, Clarke and many more; and by Kolpaks, often South Africans, 10 years ago, before they were curtailed.
Malan, like Stoneman, insideedged a big drive – in his case at the first ball which Jason Holder bowled from round the wicket. Like Westley he has made one Test 50, and at Edgbaston he looked the part of an assured No5, but at some stage a batsman has to justify his place with runs – and Malan has totalled only 108 in six attempts.
The No 5 position could be solved in an instant by promoting Stokes. There is no limit to the Test hundreds he can make, provided he does not bowl himself into premature retirement.
Having played himself in, and been dropped by Kraigg Brathwaite at second slip, Stokes rose above the sideways movement which the West Indian seamers found all day under thin cloud and took the game by the scruff like a troublemaker in a bar.
Gabriel was drained after tea, when his single over cost 13 and his speed dropped to 80mph, but the bull charged in later to dismiss Stokes, top-edging a pull, while Stuart Broad ensured his toes were nowhere near Gabriel’s yorker.
If only Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins did not bowl the same pace, England’s winter prospects would be so much brighter.