The great fourth in­nings dis­play of qual­i­ty bat­ting judge­ment, com­mit­ment and be­lief in self, led es­pe­cial­ly by three play­ers, Ke­mar Roach, Shai Hope and Justin Greaves, has giv­en the long-suf­fer­ing West In­dies crick­et­ing na­tion rea­son to once again be­lieve in our crick­et and crick­eters.

To stay at the wick­et for al­most two days and to fin­ish on 457 for six, the sec­ond high­est bat­ting to­tal in the fourth in­nings of a Test match, and so earn a draw to de­ny New Zealand of what seemed a like­ly vic­to­ry, is cause enough for pride and sat­is­fac­tion amongst West In­di­an sup­port­ers.

Over the last 25-plus years, West In­di­an sup­port­ers, for­mer crick­eters and var­i­ous oth­ers have had good cause to lam­bast play­ers, coach­es and the ad­min­is­tra­tion for the slide from the top to be­ing close to the weak­est of test-play­ing na­tions.

The dou­ble cen­tu­ry by Greaves came through a com­mit­ment to stay at the wick­et and score runs when ap­pro­pri­ate. Hope, with his con­sis­tent and qual­i­ty per­for­mances in all forms of the game, du­ly earned the place as the lead­ing West In­di­an bat­ter of the era with his score of 140 in part­ner­ship with Greaves.

At crit­i­cal points of the in­nings, Hope re­strict­ed the nat­ur­al and flu­ent stroke play he is ca­pa­ble of; but nev­er com­plete­ly missed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­rav­el his dri­ves and pulls to keep the score­board go­ing. It was an in­struc­tive ap­proach set down by Hope, which Greaves adopt­ed when his part­ner was out and he had to take over the se­nior scor­ing role in part­ner­ship with Roach.

Greaves’ even­tu­al 202 not out was ex­em­plary in terms of de­fend­ing his wick­et against the bowlers, tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to score runs with clas­sic shots on both sides of the wick­et and en­cour­ag­ing Roach not to yield to the temp­ta­tion to give away his wick­et to the New Zealand bowlers.

Roach re­sist­ed the best and de­ter­mined ef­forts of the New Zealand pace and spin at­tack in a grit­ty de­nial of self as he ac­cu­mu­lat­ed 58 runs in over 233 balls. It was the kind of qual­i­ty and dis­ci­plined per­for­mance which has been too of­ten miss­ing from West In­di­an teams and play­ers over the pe­ri­od when the re­gion­al team slumped from be­ing the un­ques­tion­able world cham­pi­ons to a po­si­tion close to the bot­tom of the Test lad­der.

Apart from Roach’s dogged dis­play at the crease, his five for 78 in New Zealand’s sec­ond in­nings showed he could still lead the bowl­ing at­tack. His tal­ly of 291 wick­ets from 86 Test match­es, ahead of the likes, in wick­ets, of Joel Gar­ner, Michael Hold­ing, Andy Roberts, Wes Hall and Char­lie Grif­fith, tells of his class and longevi­ty at 37 years old.

Hav­ing re­stored a mea­sure of pride in West In­dies crick­et, the team, par­tic­u­lar­ly amongst the spe­cial­ist bat­ters led by cap­tain Ros­ton Chase, must now ab­sorb the lessons of the dis­play of char­ac­ter and tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the three he­roes of the first Test and re­solve to go af­ter a great team ef­fort in the two re­main­ing Tests of the se­ries. To do oth­er­wise would be to make the ef­fort of the first Test of no last­ing con­se­quence and to have the Windies re­main amongst the low­ly-placed Test teams.