West Indies vs England: ‘Fearful’ tourists face trial by pace to avoid humiliating whitewash

Joe Root is contending with an injury crisis, with Ben Stokes a doubt ahead of the final Test in Saint Lucia

As a cricketing nation, Saint Lucia has plenty of passion but no great cricketing pedigree. It has produced just a single cricketer of note, the former West Indies captain Darren Sammy, whose name adorns the country’s only international stadium. The Caribbean Premier League franchise, the Stars, often struggles to fill its ground. What it does have is one of the finest fast bowling tracks in the region, as England – beaten and bereft – are about to discover at uncomfortably close quarters.

Two days out, the pitch was liberally covered in grass, slowly baking in the noon sun, and very hard. It may break up a little as the game progresses, but at its outset it should be as appealing to the four West Indies quicks as a lean, juicy steak. Those who know about these things say it bears a striking resemblance with the surfaces they used to produce in the 1970s and the 1980s.

Eight months ago, Kemar Roach and Shannon Gabriel shared 19 Sri Lankan wickets between them here. And as they take the field in search of a 3-0 series whitewash, they will spur themselves with a glance at their bedraggled opponents, who in four attempts on this tour have shown not the slightest aptitude for playing high-quality fast bowling in conducive conditions.

Their bowling coach Vasbert Drakes, a cherished all-rounder for Sussex and Barbados in the 1990s, sees something else, too. Fear. “I wouldn’t use the words ‘intimidate with pace’, but when you have pace it gives you a little more option to outfox the batters,” he said. “At the moment, that’s what we have in our favour. We put fear in the opposition heart. The objective is to make sure we have pace.”

They’ll have pace all right, even more than they’ve brought so far. Their captain and slowest seamer Jason Holder will watch this match from the boundary’s edge, suspended for his team’s persistently slow over rate. There has been much wailing and grinding of teeth over this in recent days, and while it is unquestionably a shame for Holder and his team, either over rates a problem in the international game or they aren’t. If they’re going to be properly policed, you can’t simply object to a punishment just because the guy on the receiving end is a really lovely bloke.

Time will tell how much the West Indies miss Holder’s quietly inspirational leadership, his sure lower-order batting, his immaculate control of line and length. In the meantime, England will need to worry about his replacement. The 20-year-old Guyanese all-rounder Keemo Paul would be the more like-for-like swap, but the more likely beneficiary is Oshane Thomas, the 21-year-old from Jamaica whose performances in short-form cricket have already set tongues wagging.

Drakes first saw Thomas playing under-19 cricket in 2014, and earmarked him as “one for the future who would put fear into any opposition team”. He has played just eight first-class games, but on the strength of a sparkling CPL season, was picked for the recent white-ball tour of India, where his exhilarating 90mph pace earned him a deal with the Rajasthan Royals for this year’s Indian Premier League.

Oshane Thomas (right) could come into the side for the third Test (Getty Images)

And the rise of players like Thomas and Paul epitomises the new-found optimism in West Indies cricket on the back of this series. This is a young group, disciplined and skilful, who know their history but refuse to be bound by it. Tough tours in less conducive conditions will give us their real measure. But what this Test will show us is whether, with increased expectation and without their captain, they have the residual desire and character to turn a bad tour for England into a wholesale humiliation.

The West Indies, at least, have a plan. How England would love one of those. How the thousands of travelling fans would love to see a partnership of substance, a bowling blitz, the sense – in short – that their team has the faintest clue what on earth they’re meant to be doing. The bowling showed a marked improvement from Barbados to Antigua, but it is the batting that demands the sort of quizzical stare normally reserved for an exceptionally important piece of postmodernist art that, on closer inspection, is revealed simply to be a random splattering of bird faeces on an east London wall.

Ben Stokes could miss the third Test through injury (AP)

“There hasn’t been an obvious approach really, has there?” Jos Buttler admitted on Thursday. He was referring to the difficulty of executing a clear gameplan when wickets are tumbling all around you; as Mike Tyson almost said, everybody has a plan until they find themselves 40-4. But it spoke inadvertently to the sheer confusion currently gripping this side, a soup of mixed roles and mixed messages that leaves one of the best-resourced squads in international cricket 2-0 down and unable to bat for more than a couple of sessions. To dig in or play some shots? To play with freedom or play the situation? And by the way, where am I batting today? England are hot-desking in the middle of a Test series, and the results have been about as chaotic as you might expect.

Another reshuffle may be on the cards here. England were already looking to replace the wheedling medium pace of Sam Curran with the clenched fist of Mark Wood, but an injury to Ben Stokes this week has clouded matters. Should Stokes miss out, Curran would be reprieved as one of only four fit seamers. Should Ben Foakes fail to recover from a hand injury, England would need to find a replacement batsman, too. Keaton Jennings, your country calls, for the third time. In which case Joe Denly would shift down to No 3, freeing Jonny Bairstow to drop down the order and take the gloves, pushing Buttler down to No6. The day surely can’t be far off when the fall of an England wicket is greeted with two batsmen descending the pavilion steps, each insisting to the other that they’re batting No 5 today.

Amid which consternation England should still be good enough to win this Test, as they should have been good enough to win this series. It’ll need the openers to see off the new ball, Joe Root to come good with the bat, the middle order to build partnerships rather than burnish legacies, the new-ball pair to pick up wickets rather than plays and misses, the in-fielders to hold their catches. Above all, with the Ashes just over the hill, it’ll need England to locate their resolve and remember just what is at stake in this most freighted of years.