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Day 1: Blewett spearheads a staunch recovery

BOWLING too short in the first hour and paying dearly for a dropped catch after tea, the West Indies bowlers - impressively shown the way by Ian Bishop - nevertheless had a firm grip on Australia for much of the first day of the second Test here, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

They had their opponents on the rack at 94 for four and 131 for five on a bare, two-paced pitch and it would be tempting to say that they blew it if only because Greg Blewett, 25, was the batsman who led Australia's staunch recovery. Puns apart, the West Indians did spoil their own recovery by dropping the South Australian when he was 31 and again, a much more difficult chance, just after the new ball had been taken at 208 for five.

Robert Samuels did well at square leg to get a hand to a firm hook off Courtney Walsh, but Test matches are sometimes decided on whether or not such chances stick. It certainly looked suspiciously as though Brian Lara, with one superb slip catch to his credit, was not concentrating 100 per cent when he missed a waist-high edge to his left off Kenny Benjamin which would have reduced Australia to 170 for six and exposed a vulnerable-looking tail.

Instead, they finished the day at 224 for five, leaving the fast bowlers, and Lara on his favourite ground, with much to do. The first of their tasks on the second day was to part Blewett and the irrepressible Ian Healy, who had stolen the initiative by canny, confident batting exactly as he had done on the first evening at Brisbane.

If they played a Test in England on a pitch which had been covered with chairs for spectators at a rock concert only a fortnight before the game, the Test and County Cricket Board chairman would no doubt consider it a resignation issue and our cricket-loving Prime Minister might almost do so too. But, as is so often the case with ill-kempt pitches in a warm climate, it was not quite as bad as it looked and Mark Taylor chose to bat without much hesitation when he won the toss.

Australia had already sent Peter McIntyre back to Adelaide in the expectation that Mark Waugh's finger-spin might be just as effective and in the belief that a third fast bowler would be required. Thus it was Jason Gillespie who became their third new cap in two matches, Paul Reiffel having dropped out with a sore neck.

Taylor and Matthew Elliott fed at first off some listless and unintelligent new-ball bowling. Taylor was able to leave a good deal alone - it is one of his great skills - while Elliott cut and the captain pulled. They put on 50 in the first hour.

Bishop's introduction immediately changed the mood. He pitched the ball on a length at a demanding pace, got some swing and made the batsmen play. Elliott, forward down the line of his off stump, edged to first slip, where Lara clung on to a knee-high catch. Four overs later, Bishop's third, Taylor drove to short extra cover, a shot which suggested, not for first or last time, that the ball was not always coming on.

Ricky Ponting fell to a similar shot to cover from the first ball after lunch and it was a fair indication of some fine bowling from Bishop and the others that Mark Waugh played somewhere near his best yet spent 15 overs making 19 runs before toe-ending a hook to slip. Batting had become a sticky, tricky business and there was much for Blewett and Michael Bevan - one of whom must go when Steve Waugh returns - to do.

Blewett had shown that he had the temperament as well as the technique for Test cricket when he made hundreds against England in his first two Test matches. He did so again now, refusing to panic when he and Michael Bevan became even more bogged down. Bevan had batted two hours for 16 when he was fifth out, four balls after tea, brilliantly caught at second slip by Hooper from a fierce, sliced, firm-footed drive.

Life became easier for Blewett as soon as Healy arrived. Averaging 206 after Brisbane, that nuggety little redhead did not, of course, lack confidence. Despite an occasional cut and miss, he stood still and played his short-arm strokes with what must have seemed infuriating ease to the big, hitherto dominant fast bowlers. In such a mood Healy is like Just William creating havoc in a world of irritated adults.

Blewett, cover-driving with the full face of his bat, played the prettier strokes, but Healy scored the faster and they had added 93 before the 90 overs were up. It was, therefore, the West Indians who were happiest to leave the field, 18 minutes late, despite 17 overs of spin, on a hot, clear evening.

A crowd of 17,637 might have been sufficiently absorbed not to bother about the torpid over-rate while the fast bowlers were in operation.

It was not as bad as it used to be before ICC fines; nor was the tempo enhanced by electrically operated sight-screens-cum-advertisement boards which moved with painful slowness whenever a left- and right-hander were in together. Marketing first; cricket second.

Day 3: Australian patience stifles Bishop's fire
Christopher Martin-Jenkins

THE West Indies nosed above a total of 300 for the first time in nine completed innings against Australia but after three days of intense cricket it looked likely that the handicap of having to bat last would count against their hopes of winning the second Test to level the series.

It has been one of those tight, absorbing contests which are often produced by slow, slightly uneven pitches on which patience is the greatest virtue.

A fast outfield has compensated to some extent for the slowness of a pitch on which driving is safe only against a genuine half-volley. Time was on no-one's side when Mark Taylor, though he was struggling against determined bowling and was caught at first slip soon after, chose to continue batting yesterday when the umpires offered him the chance to come off for bad light.

With two days left Australia's lead, with eight second-innings wickets in hand, was 104. Matthew Elliott had made 45 of their 77. Coming decisively on to the front foot and putting a very straight bat firmly to the ball, this tall, composed Victorian showed for the first time why the selectors preferred his solid but certainly not unenterprising approach to the more vivid but mercurial batting of Michael Slater. Of the young Turks it is Ricky Ponting who has looked least at home in the conditions. He was at sea both against pace and spin before Ian Bishop found his outside edge with an away-swinger to crown a hard day's work.

Australia's out-cricket was not perfect for once but the the greater guile and patience of their bowling, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne to the fore, earned them a first-innings lead of 27. McGrath's all-round contribution included his highest first-class score, part of an important last-wicket stand of 43 with the promising Jason Gillespie. Well as McGrath bowled again, however, no individual could be prouder of his performance than Bishop.

He has bowled increasingly well since his poor start in Brisbane and there was no element of fluke in the fact that he shared second-top score with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. He timed the ball better than anyone in making 17 more than he has before in a Test.

Why he was not given the new ball after a rest in the tea interval was a mystery because the course of the Australian innings suggested that the menace has gone from Curtly Ambrose's bowling, leaving only a wonderfully natural, accurate fast bowler who will need more pace and bounce in pitches - and very soon - if he is to follow Courtney Walsh to 300 Test wickets. The hard work required of fast bowlers in county cricket seems to have quelled the spark which can still ignite Walsh.

The captain removed Ian Healy and Greg Blewett with the second new ball on Saturday but Blewett later gilded his spirited 69 by producing a dipping in-swinger with a battered ball to defeat Sherwin Campbell. It ended another innings studded with clean and classical offside strokes by Campbell and suggested that Blewett will be playing for Australia, not Middlesex next season.

The West Indies started yesterday at 156 for three and such was the accuracy of Warne and McGrath that Carl Hooper faced 33 balls without scoring before he was leg before pushing his front pad at a leg-break which pitched on leg stump and would have hit middle and off. The two key wickets, however, were those of Jimmy Adams, who had batted well until he was deceived by McGrath's slower ball and miscued a drive to short mid-wicket, and Chanderpaul, who made a masterly 48 in 3.25 hours.

The late dip which comes from vigorous spin undid him as he drove at Warne in search of what would have been only the third 50 of the match. It paved the way for Gillespie to take his first two Test wickets.

Day 4: West Indies face final-day trial on barren pitch

THE England side in Zimbabwe may have made a poor start to their tour but they could take vicarious consolation from the embarrassment of the West Indies yesterday, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

On the dry, slow pitch on which they will have to bat all today to save the match, their bowling was steady but innocuous in the morning and lacked the necessary gusto thereafter in sapping heat and in a match position which grew increasingly hopeless.

The bowling was one thing, the fielding quite another. Sydney's roughened outfield only partly excused a desperate, sloppy performance in which man after man failed to pick up the ball cleanly. Courtney Browne has a good pair of hands but a man born to keep wicket he clearly is not. His ragged work compunded the felonies being committed all round and inevitably catches were missed - not to mention the simplest of run-out opportunities in bizarre circumstances - as Australia painstakingly made their position safe before a bored Monday crowd, then accelerated after tea to the point where Mark Taylor declared.

Leaving his bowlers 12 overs on the fourth evening, the target of 340 which he set was not altogether beyond reach. In the minimum of 102 overs remaining, they were asked to score at a rate of 3.3 runs an over, but once the hardness has gone from the new ball, scoring has been slow and difficult throughout the game. Sherwin Campbell and Robert Samuels reduced the goal to 313 while surviving the last 40 minutes but

as usual Shane Warne and Brian Lara were the players on whom most hope was pinned on the last day.

History suggested that the chances of the West Indies saving the game were relatively small: only eight of their 48 previous Test matches in Australia have ended in draws, a fair indication that attack has been the watchword. The Sydney pitch in the 1970s was a good deal grassier and more resilient than this one but the highest winning fourth-innings score here was a mere 276 by Australia against England 99 years ago.

Mark Waugh, an off-spinner these days, was given the new ball on a surface which, quite untypically for Australia, suits finger spin more than anything else.

Waugh played the longest innings for Australia yesterday but it was the less established players who made the most of the opportunity of playing against the West Indies fast bowlers in a defensive mood on a slow pitch.

Greg Blewett again timed the ball exceptionally well to get the scoring rate moving and this had the effect of loosening Michael Bevan's hitherto rather intense batting and releasing his natural game. It was Matthew Elliott, however, who had the day never to forget.

Having made only five runs in the first 55 minutes against fresh bowlers he began to outscore Waugh and to play with pleasant freedom, driving confidently on the up and pulling decisively.

A maiden Test hundred was within his compass when, 15 minutes before lunch, he drove to mid-wicket. It looked like a quickish two, though Courtney Walsh moved smartly enough from mid-on to field and threw off balance to Carl Hooper. Both batsmen had their eyes on the ball as they ran the second but Waugh came diagonally across the pitch and collided heavily with his partner.

Both men were knocked off their feet and Elliott twisted his right knee, wrenching the lateral cartilage, as he fell and plunged back towards the crease. A split second earlier Hooper had needed only to remove the bails at his end to run Waugh out by yards but he chose instead to throw the ball to Browne, who could not remove the bails in time.

Elliott will have an arthroscopy and has a reasonable chance of being fit for the third Test, starting on Boxing Day in Melbourne.

Day 5: Warne in reminder of 'that' leg-break

MARK TAYLOR still maintains that Shane Warne is not back to his absolute best, but in the course of passing Clarrie Grimmett to become Australia's sixth most successful bowler, with 217 wickets in five years, he delivered the ball which yesterday effectively settled the second Test match, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

It was only one of several he bowled on a dead slow pitch, which turned at least as much as the famous leg-break to Mike Gatting at Old Trafford in 1993.

That startling, in-dipping leg-break began the process of making Australia the best side in world cricket and Warne, with earnings of #500,000 a year, the richest player.

Yesterday's decisive ball pitched into the rough a good two feet outside Shivnarine Chanderpaul's off stump and bit back ferociously to hit the middle one.

Less than 21/2 hours later Australia won the match by 124 runs to take a two-nil lead in the five-match series, which resumes on Boxing Day.

Both the ball and its timing, two balls before lunch, were deadly. Chanderpaul, whose confidence and enthusiasm stood out in a team visibly short of both, had played a brilliant innings and contributed to a morning's cricket so exotic that it matched the amazing session of play, which launched the previous series between these two teams, in Barbados 19 months ago.

On that occasion Brian Lara and Carl Hooper counter-attacked to take the West Indies to 116 for three at lunch after three wickets had fallen for six runs to the new ball.

Here, on a bigger ground, with less of a pressure-cooker atmosphere, simply because there were only 8,000 watching, yet with the West Indies in a similarly desperate plight, it was Hooper again, at his gliding, easeful, beguiling best, who turned the tide for a while with a diminutive left-hander as his partner.

It was not Lara, because he had gone to Glenn McGrath for the third time in four innings, luck and confidence having temporarily deserted him, but Chanderpaul, whose 95-minute, 68-ball innings was inspiring. The pair from Guyana followed their partnership of 172 at Brisbane with 117 in 22 overs.

Allowing even for the attacking fields, which Taylor was forced to modify to an extent, the rate of scoring was quite extraordinary in conditions which had prevented the most powerful stroke-players of either side from getting the ball off the square in the first four days.

Chanderpaul, moving his feet to drive Warne on either side of the wicket or leaning back to cut him, hit 10 fours, reaching his fifty in 38 balls after three wickets had fallen in the first 25 minutes. Hooper stroked six fours, three of them in one over from Jason Gillespie.

Taylor, arms folded at first slip and gums masticating madly, did not panic, nor lose faith in Warne. He said afterwards: ``Chanderpaul was playing on a rough pitch and he made it look as though it was a road.

``I was obviously a bit concerned, but you have to have faith in your players, and the second-to-last ball before lunch was the difference in the game.''

It was not by any means the only difference, but Australia made short work of taking the last six wickets in the afternoon.

McGrath duly obliged again when Jimmy Adams (highest-rated batsman in the world, my foot) drove him limply to mid-off, and Hooper edged a googly from Michael Bevan to slip where Taylor dropped the ball, but flicked it back into his hands with his right foot as he fell backwards.

Australia had made a marvellous start when McGrath, man of the match on a pitch giving him nothing, claimed Sherwin Campbell leg before, trying to glance across the line, in the third over of the morning.

Robert Samuels followed in the fourth over, cutting in vain against the first ball to turn quickly and extravagantly, and Lara went in the seventh, unluckily perhaps. Lara had moved into position to pull McGrath from round the wicket, changed his mind, but got a thin edge, which Ian Healy scooped up jubilantly.

Darrell Hair at square leg confirmed to David Shepherd that the catch had just carried, but Lara was not so sure, and Courtney Walsh's refusal to comment afterwards suggested that in the West Indies dressing-room at least the feeling was that Lara had been unfairly dismissed. My impression was that Healy's catch was legitimate.

Australia have replaced the injured Matthew Elliott with Stuart Law for the one-day triangular series with West Indies and Pakistan, starting on Friday. Michael Kasprowicz has been dropped for Tom Moody.

Herschelle Gibbs scored 200 not out as South Africa rattled up 384 for five against India A in Nagpur. He hit four sixes and 28 fours in a 215-run, fifth-wicket stand with Derek Crookes, who made a patient 76.