The West In­dies vs Sri Lan­ka 2 Test match­es end­ed in a dis­ap­point­ing drawn se­ries with both test match­es fail­ing to pro­duce one out­right win­ner. Most West In­di­an fans would have pre­dict­ed vic­to­ry for their team af­ter their ex­ploits in Bangladesh, cou­pled with the white ball vic­to­ries in both the ODIs and the T20, as well as from the fact that Sri Lan­ka was miss­ing a few of their top test play­ers.

Nev­er­the­less, it pro­duced some tough, hard-fought days of crick­et be­tween two even­ly matched teams. It did seem as though West In­dies would have tak­en the se­ries from day one when they dis­missed the vis­i­tors for a pal­try 169 in the first in­nings of the first test.

But how well did Sri Lan­ka fight back to score 476 in their sec­ond in­nings and in the end, West In­dies were bat­ting just to draw the game chas­ing 375 runs.

In the sec­ond test, roles were re­versed and Sri Lan­ka bat­ted out the fi­nal day with­out any alarms to save the test. At times in both test match­es, good crick­et was on dis­play; ex­cit­ing, tough, pas­sion­ate and dis­ci­plined un­for­tu­nate­ly in­ter­spersed with some or­di­nary crick­et by both teams. Slop­py field­ing and dropped catch­es, bats­men oc­ca­sion­al­ly play­ing reck­less shots and far too many no balls be­ing bowled at this lev­el.

Both teams have a lot of home­work to do to progress up the lad­der and chal­lenge the likes of In­dia, New Zealand and Aus­tralia.

One of the most dis­ap­point­ing as­pects of the tests was the con­di­tion of the pitch­es at the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um in An­tigua. For both test match­es, they were flat and docile in na­ture and al­though the likes of Shan­non Gabriel and Alzarri Joseph bent their backs and got the ball up by the hel­met of the op­po­si­tion, there was no re­al pace from the pitch.

Even on the fifth day, Rah­keem Corn­wall re­ceived lit­tle as­sis­tance un­less the ball pitched in the rough and even that did not as­sist the lone spe­cial­ist spin­ner in the West In­dies team. It is time for CWI to prop­er­ly as­sess the pitch­es in the re­gion and come up with some type of for­mu­la to as­sist all the re­gion­al grounds on the type of test match pitch­es to pre­pare for the West In­dies teams. The ODIs and T20s are tak­en care of as the spec­ta­tors want to see six­es and fours on docile bat­ting tracks.

In test crick­et, it is a tough bat­tle be­tween bat and ball as both should en­joy a good, boun­cy pitch where the bats­men can play shots and there is some­thing for the bowlers. A friend asked me that if Mal­colm Mar­shall was bowl­ing on that track, would the Sri Lankans have sur­vived? Or if Lance Gibbs was bowl­ing on the last day, would West In­dies have com­plained about the flat pitch? Un­for­tu­nate­ly, West In­dies no longer has bowlers of that qual­i­ty so it is un­fair to com­pare what bowlers are in the team to­day to those of yes­ter­year.

In­deed, what is re­quired is to work with them, help them to im­prove and give them the con­fi­dence re­quired to bet­ter them­selves in­to world-class bowlers. Again, that is pre­cise­ly the job of a bowl­ing coach.

West In­dies bats­men did a good job. Kyle May­ers, in par­tic­u­lar, has im­proved be­yond recog­ni­tion with his bat­ting. He should keep work­ing hard at his game be­cause the bet­ter bowlers will cer­tain­ly look for his flaws and ex­plore them how­ev­er, I ad­mire his pos­i­tive at­ti­tude.

Nkrumah Bon­ner has al­so im­proved but his strength seems to lie through his pow­ers of con­cen­tra­tion and he must con­tin­ue to play balls on mer­it rather than try­ing to be like May­ers and at­tack the bowl­ing.

Skip­per Kraigg Brath­waite now has to find the con­sis­ten­cy that he has been lack­ing over the last cou­ple of years and per­haps his new role as cap­tain has brought more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to his bat­ting. John Camp­bell, on the oth­er hand, con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor con­cern. He is un­doubt­ed­ly try­ing hard and work­ing at his game but the se­lec­tors may have to call time on his test sta­tus.

How­ev­er, it may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be the end of his ca­reer as he will have to go back to the draw­ing board and start from the ba­sics to re­vive his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer.

Jer­maine Black­wood con­tin­ues to be like Jekyll and Hyde - one minute tear­ing in­to a bowl­ing at­tack and the next, find­ing the most im­pos­si­ble ways to get out. Mak­ing him vice-cap­tain was not a good move pri­mar­i­ly be­cause of his ir­re­spon­si­ble na­ture with the bat. While he is an ex­cel­lent team man, he must ex­er­cise more self-con­trol in this area of his game.

Shai Hope and Dar­ren Bra­vo must be giv­en se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion. I can’t see Hope in any oth­er po­si­tion at the mo­ment apart from open­ing the bat­ting. The se­lec­tors opt­ed to go with 5 spe­cial­ist bats­men against the Sri Lankans; a move I ap­plaud­ed as I be­lieve that Ja­son Hold­er is good enough to come in at num­ber 6 and score runs.

His bat­ting can im­prove and he has to be more con­sis­tent in chalk­ing up big­ger scores but to get 20 wick­ets, the West In­dies needs 5 bowlers. The ques­tion re­mains - against a bet­ter bowl­ing at­tack, can Hold­er at 6 pro­duce the goods? On­ly time will tell.

Young Joshua Da Sil­va will con­tin­ue to im­prove as his bat­ting tech­nique is good.

He needs to gath­er con­fi­dence in his abil­i­ty and be­gin to ro­tate the strike more of­ten rather than play each ball with a dead bat. Once he works hard at all as­pects of his game in­clud­ing his wick­et-keep­ing and gains ex­pe­ri­ence, I ex­pect he will be a fix­ture on the West In­dies team.

The bowl­ing at­tack at times looked good, but there were too many balls wast­ed and I am sure the West In­dies bowl­ing coach will con­tin­ue to work on the con­sis­ten­cy of the bowlers.

Next up for the West In­dies is South Africa which is go­ing to be a re­al acid test for this young West In­dies team. They will come armed with va­ri­ety in their bowl­ing at­tack and their bat­ting line­up has many world-class play­ers. It will be tough for the West In­dies who must be well pre­pared to get any­thing out of the Pro­teas. But for now, fans are see­ing good, pos­i­tive strides be­ing made by their young test team.

There are a few gaps to plug to make them even bet­ter but the at­ti­tude is ex­cel­lent; the dis­ci­pline with­in the squad is good; the pas­sion and de­sire is fil­ter­ing through like a breath of fresh air but in the next cou­ple of months, just how good this West In­dies test team is will be up for judge­ment.

Fi­nal­ly, the dis­grace­ful po­lit­i­cal non­sense off the field ap­pears to be over. Why do ad­min­is­tra­tors in sport al­ways feel they are big­ger than the sport it­self? By all means, Ricky Sker­ritt and Dr Kishore Shal­low should be giv­en an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to take West In­dies crick­et for­ward.

Ed­i­tor’s note:

The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.