Free weekend for beaten Windies
The West Indies gave themselves the weekend off and, through plain bad cricket, will, undeservedly, escape the misery of the on the job chilly early May English weather.
The West Indies Players Association (WIPA) which has been aggressively pursuing better pay and other working conditions for the team may feel that the boys deserve no work on weekends- like civil servants and office clerks.
The hopeless West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) cannot even sack Chris Gayle and company for incompetence.
Losing in three days is not only not Test Cricket: it’s just not cricket.
The truth is that while the heroics of vice captain Denesh Ramdin and Brendan Nash in the second innings brought a measure of respectability to the West Indies team, Gayle’s side was beaten by a pretty ordinary English outfit with batsmen who couldn’t negotiate Fidel Edwards’ pace.
The slew of dropped catches made a difference: had those catches being taken England would have scored around 250 runs.
Not that they would not have won the game but it would have been more of a contest.
When Shivnarine Chanderpaul could be dismissed for scores of 0 and 4 and Ramnaresh Sarwan for 1 and 13, then the writing will be on the proverbial wall.
They are your premier batsman and with a leaden footed Gayle unable to deal with the moving ball in English conditions that is the end of the story. James Anderson, Stuart Broad and debutant Graham Onions exploited conditions they understand and the younger batsmen simply didn’t have the technique to cope with this challenge.
In the West Indies, under sunny skies and flat pitches things are more straightforward.
There is little time for the West Indies to get things right and it is not easy to bounce back in a two-Test series.
Gayle has only just returned from 20-20 cricket in South Africa: he failed at that too and appeared perplexed after only 48 hours in England.
However, he has to lead from in front. There has to be more emphasis on fielding and net sessions where the younger batsmen will have to get batting practice against the moving ball.
For the moment, England would feel they have the series sewn up and are in a position to achieve a clean sweep.