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Looking ahead to the Wisden Trophy

Wednesday, January 14 2004

Six long years have passed since England toured the West Indies - a series which started on a feisty pitch in Kingston (the only time a test match has been abandoned before lunch on the first day) and ended at St Johns, Antigua in a familiar thrashing at the hands of those two great pace stalwarts, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh.

Not since 1974 have England come away from the Caribbean without losing the series, and you have to venture all the way back to 1968 to find the Old Country claiming the Wisden Trophy on foreign shores.

Reading the scorecards from 1968 and 1974 is akin to reading a Who's Who of great West Indian and English cricketers of yesteryear : Rohan Kanhai, Garfield Sobers, Clive Lloyd, Wes Hall, Lance Gibbs, Geoff Boycott, Tom Graveney, Colin Cowdrey, Alan Knott, Tony Lock.

The likes of Viv Richards and Ian Botham were yet to make their indelible mark on the international scene, those two gladiators were from another era - one where the balance of power had shifted alarmingly in favour of the maroon to the extent that Botham only finished on the winning side once - in 1991, when both were spent forces.

So - another millennium, another tour - this one acrimonious already from the point of view of England supporters reeling under proposed West Indies Cricket Board surcharges amounting to 160 pounds per person per game.

The squad selected for this year's tour bears a striking resemblance to that which did battle with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka towards the end of 2003 - it is identical in every way to the names originally selected for the Asian venture - although of course injuries took their toll on that squad. The names selected in early September were:

Test squad:
Michael Vaughan (capt), Marcus Trescothick, Mark Butcher, Nasser Hussain, Graham Thorpe, Andrew Flintoff, Paul Collingwood, Rikki Clarke, Chris Read (wk), Geraint Jones (wk), Ashley Giles, Gareth Batty, Matthew Hoggard, Stephen Harmison, James Anderson.

ODI squad:
Vaughan (capt), Trescothick, Vikram Solanki, Andrew Strauss, Anthony McGrath, Flintoff, Collingwood, Clarke, Read (wk), Ian Blackwell, Giles, Batty, Richard Johnson, James Kirtley, Anderson.

The names of Richard Johnson and Martin Saggers soon replaced those of James Anderson and Andrew Flintoff for the Bangladesh leg. Robert Croft was added to the party for Sri Lanka and spent virtually the whole time sitting down, Johnson fell by the wayside only to be reinstated following the eventual withdrawal of Stephen Harmison, and James Kirtley also came into the fold.

There may or may not have been changes to the One-Day party but nobody seemed to notice under the leaden skies which curtailed the series in Sri Lanka after just one embarrassingly one-sided match in Dambulla (soon to be named 'Dam Buster') which England lost by ten wickets.

It seems that the England selectors are now sure in their own minds who they would like to take the field, certainly for the moment, although injuries have a nasty habit of laying to waste any and all plans, no matter how carefully drawn up they may be.

England will be, as always, looking to their senior professionals who have previous experience in the West Indies, but it doesn't make pretty reading. Of the batsmen, Mark Butcher averages 15, Nasser Hussain 28 and Graham Thorpe 34 in the islands, although they had to contend with two of the best pacers of recent years on their previous tours. None of the bowlers are yet to turn their arm over in anger in the Caribbean.

The respective rankings of the two sides in the ICC Test Championship table (England fourth on 101 points, West Indies eighth on 83 at the time of writing) seem to indicate a close series with perhaps England shading things, but you ignore history at your peril.

The West Indies in particular seem to be looking forward to the future with an aggressive youth policy which has seen the likes of Omari Banks, Jerome Taylor, Fidel Edwards and Dwayne Smith thrust forward from relative obscurity at a tender age. Blend in the experience of the hard-hitting Chris Gayle and the elegant Ramnaresh Sarwan, still to reach their peak, the redoubtable Shivnarine Chanderpaul and of course Brian Charles Lara, one of the best batsmen of all time, and you have the basis of a very good side indeed.

The bowling attacks of both sides are inexperienced to the extreme, and it is here that the key to the series seems to lie. Is either attack capable of taking twenty wickets often enough to wrest the high ground in the series? Only time will tell, but the opportunity is there for bowlers on either side to stand up and be counted.

England will, in all likelihood, add the name of Simon Jones to the 15 should he go well in India, and it will be interesting to see whether Stephen Harmison has finally put his radar problems behind him.

For the home side, tearaway speedster Jermaine Lawson is another name to watch with interest. Reported by the umpires during the West Indies v Australia series last June, he has undergone hours of remedial work on his action but is yet to receive the all-clear. If he is cleared to take part in the series, we could have the mouth-watering prospect of Lawson teaming up with Fidel Edwards, giving us with Harmison and Jones two genuine quick men on each side.

March 11 can't come quick enough.


Posted by Eddie