Posted by 
Some people think that the West Indies are a team who buckle, like a belt. People think they fold, like a clean pair of trousers.
But this West Indies team stood defiantly like a man who can’t find his belt or his trousers and doesn’t care about that fact. He knows that there are more important things in life than having your trousers on and properly buckled. He’s got some standing to do and he’s going to crack on with it. Perhaps he folds his arms.
England’s bowlers bowled well, so you’d have to say that the West Indian batsmen batted better. Andrew Flintoff at times bowled as quickly as any Englishman has bowled, despite being in huge pain. Stuart Broad tried all sorts of things, dispatching no less a batsman than Shivnarine Chanderpaul with a ball delivered from the outer reaches of the crease. Anderson cut batsmen in half, Harmison harried and Swann spun, but the West Indian batsmen lasted the course.
In many ways this draw is more worrying for England than the defeat that preceded it. That felt like an aberration, but this was defiant stuff from the Windies.
I really enjoyed the few hours I got to see at the end of the day yesterday – it was good test cricket.
Amazing that the Old Rec held together for 5 days after only 48 hours of preparation, although to be fair it was dying by the end, which made life hard for the England bowlers.
But the Windies batted extremely well and all the way down, which is a great sign for the Windies and a more worrying sign for England.
Still, the series is still up for grabs and Ebngland will need to find deep reserves to redress the deficit now.
I can’t speak, yet. I need some more time to calm down.
I’ve calmed down now, so iiiiiiiiiit’s Ranting Time.
Strauss asked all of his bowlers to bowl at 1:30pm on Wednesday. This gave them (from 5:00pm Tuesday) 20.5 hours rest, although they all had to bat a bit.
If he had enforced the follow-on, all bar two (maybe three) of his bowlers would have had 17 hours rest (5:00pm Tuesday to 10:00am Wednesday).
The three bowlers in question would have had an extra 40 minutes of work before they got their 17 hours off, which is neither here nor there.
So his decision, the one that effectively cost England the match, was to give his bowlers three-and-a-half hours additional rest after a full seventeen hours.
I am afraid that after writing that I have gone back to being unable to speak again.
Is it alright to start mentioning Ramnaresh Sarwan yet?? Cos I think he is fab…..and he does seem to be playing somewhat well right now. [Perhaps even a bit better than Lord Megachief Shiv…..]
And he does not look as mean as Shiv either.
Both of them apparently invested their Twenty20 winnings with that Stanford cad – are they going to bat as well in Barbados?