England do boring bits well to lay down marker against West Indies on second day
Filling out forms. Reading the manual Eating your greens. The boring bits that need to be done before getting to the thing you actually want. Necessary, sure. Important? More often than not, yes. But fun? No.
We can probably add “leaving” to that list. Yes, there’ll people out there who tell you they enjoy it: doing it, watching it, lauding it. But how fun is it, really? Not just to watch but to do. How typical of cricket to have a
format that promotes not using one of the sport’s two required items against each other.
Yet, as day two at Emirates Old Trafford showed, leaving leads to greater fulfilment in Test cricket. England lasted 162 overs to post 469 for nine declared as West Indies toiled and toiled some more.
The major individual beneficiaries were Dom Sibley and Ben Stokes who, with 120 and 176 respectively, can preach the value of letting deliveries pass you by in their actions. Sibley’s was a second Test hundred – and first at home – by leaving 101 deliveries. Stokes waved through 106 to get to his 10th. It is something the former is more associated with than the latter.
The Warwickshire opener’s career to date has been one of accruing rather than pursuing. And it is fair to say while Sibley has exhibited the early hallmarks of a great run-scorer, averaging 44 up top as he does after 13 innings. This, by the way, was the longest century in terms of time for an Englishman, clocking in at 465 minutes – seven more than Keith Fletcher’s effort against Pakistan in 1974.
Stokes, meanwhile, as we have seen over the last 18 months, is reworking his tag of “scorer of great runs” with a fourth century in 12 months to make it 10 all in. Even then, he could not escape the flashy statistics – now the second-fastest Englishman to reach the flair double of 8,000 runs and 300 wickets in first-class cricket. Only WG Grace did it quicker than Stokes’ 144 matches.
There was plenty of time to pontificate just how these two careers turns might pan out beyond this. Two very different men of two very different means sharing an acceptance that slow and steady was the way here.
The morning session neither ebbed or flowed, but simply was. Those first 26 overs brought with it just 57 runs and a lack of coherence from West Indies that suggested they were already going stir crazy in anticipation of the further 56 overs of grazing to follow.
The majority of those runs were ticked off on Stokes’ row, as he began catching up with Sibley despite the opener having a 35-run head start when they came together at 81 for two on Thursday afternoon. And though a clinical straight drive for four meant the allrounder joined his partner in the nineties, a similar shot for three off Sibley’s 312th delivery got him to three figures first. Stokes had to lunch on 99 not out.
He would get there soon after the break, off 255 balls, with a reverse sweep off Roston Chase. With that under his belt, here came the acceleration. Not that Stokes was doughty in his shot selection until then: 10 fours and one six were carried in those first 103 runs. But the next fifty were accrued with looser shoulders as six more fours – one of them taking him to 119 and beyond Sibley on 117 – and another six to get him from 103 to 150 in just 46 deliveries.
Sibley was never going to catch him. That’s not his nature, proving as much with a heave to the leg side off Chase that was caught well by Kemar Roach to end his race. Stokes, though, was now shot-a-ball. Having survived a chance at gully when trying to cut Shannon Gabriel through backward point, an even more audacious reverse sweep off Roach was edged through to the keeper with his work done. England were 395 for six and West Indies out on their feet.
There was at least some crumbs for a couple of players in the field. Stokes’ wicket ended a wicketless run for Roach that stretched back to August 2019 when he removed Virat Kohli for a golden duck. Having chased that feeling lucklessly through the rest of that game, a Test against Afghanistan and the first of this series last week, he found himself with two in as many deliveries when Chris Woakes edged to Shai Hope in the cordon for a golden duck. Chase netted a third five-wicket haul of his career. Of his 66 Test dismissals, a third have come against England.
Once both centurions had gone, the play lacked any real sense of context, weirdly. West Indies would eventually be kept out there for 82 overs in the day, ragtag but still making sure runs did not flow all too
easily. Jos Buttler’s 40 was the pick of the rest, supplemented by a few blows from Dom Bess (31 not out). The declaration when it came was in keeping with the theme: slightly underwhelming but absolutely job done. Among it all, England will be satisfied with the one wicket they did manage in the evening’s 14 overs at West Indies. Sam Curran, upon review, trapped John Campbell LBW meaning the tourists will reconvene on 32 for one today looking to take cues from what Sibley and Stokes did, and a lot of what they did not.
Both will be lauded for their inputs here, which should see England square the series provided the rains forecast for this weekend do not have too big a say. They combined for a partnership of 260, adding to their 92 at Cape Town when Stokes was on hand to guide Sibley to that maiden hundred.
Of course, the most successful Test sides are the right blend of grit and blockbuster quality. But in an era of English cricket where the dashers roam free, as evidenced by the fact the ODI side bettered this score of 469 in a single innings against Australia in 2018 (481 at Trent Bridge), it is the rock-solid anchors who are the rarer species on these shores, and in the wider game. And England will be glad they seem to have one of the most resolute in Sibley.