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We thought this when we saw him bowl during the World Cup. Devendra Bishoo is one of a fair few promising West Indies bowlers knocking about at the minute.
The problem is, it’s a challenge for these bowlers to retain enthusiasm when the batsmen only ever give them 200 to bowl at. The West Indies haven’t found a proper batsman since Chris Gayle and that’s a really long time when you consider that he’s passed through being a captain and is now in a phase where the West Indies Cricket Board imply that he’s a knobhead. This generally only happens when you’re starting to get on a bit.
Fortunately for the West Indies, they’re currently playing a Test against Pakistan, a nation with an even greater aversion to run scoring. Devendra Bishoo’s 4-68 helped give the Windies a 66-run lead, even though they only scored 226 themselves.
The Windies top order have attempted to fritter away that advantage in the second innings, but Shivnarine Chanderpaul is still to come. At 36, you’d think he’d be sick of this by now.
“How have you idiots not learned anything from me in the last decade?” he might reasonably ask. “Do you suffer from all three major forms of retardation?”
This is what we call a “good” pitch, right?
I’m only half-surprised promising West Indian players haven’t ventured overseas, like several South African-born players.
Three you say ? I know of at least half a dozen.
That was a pretty good pitch, much better than the average pitch. A good game, too. It’s nice that the first test match after a barrage of limited over stuff is about as far departed from T20 as possible.
Incidentally, I think that it is clear that the West Indies, contrary to the assertion made above, have certainly found a proper batsman, namely Devendra Bishoo. In any case, this was a game where a Gayle would be much less useful than a Misbah. Pakistan, as it happens, had a Misbah. In both innings, the bowlers who got him out then proceeded to run through the rest of the Pakistani lineup as Ravi Shastri’s wit through butter.
That was not Elizabethan slang.