England and West Indies drew the first Test at Lord’s on Monday as the weather had the final say in the opening encounter of a four-match series.
West Indies finished the fifth day on 89 without loss, 312 runs short of their victory target of 401, but having comfortably avoided any prospect of defeat during a last day where rain and bad light meant only 20 of the scheduled 98 overs were bowled.
The odds had been slightly more in favour of England taking 10 wickets in a day as opposed to West Indies scoring the runs they required.
However, openers Chris Gayle (47 not out) and Daren Ganga (31 not out) were largely untroubled by Durham new-ball duo Stephen Harmison and Liam Plunkett.
Now the teams travel north to Headingley where the second Test is set to start on Friday.
If England were to force an unlikely win they badly needed Harmison, playing his first international since a disappointing Ashes tour, to find his form after a wayward first innings return of 1-117.
But his first delivery after lunch, a no-ball, was cut by Ganga for a four that saw the batsman reach 2 000 runs in Test cricket.
Plunkett was then thrashed through the covers off the back foot in cavalier style by Gayle.
Andrew Strauss, England’s captain in the absence of the injured Michael Vaughan, soon had just two slips in for Gayle despite having plenty of runs to play with.
It wasn’t long before Strauss turned to left-arm spinner Monty Panesar, who’d starred in the first innings with 6-129.
Panesar, who’d been due to bowl Monday’s ninth over when rain stopped play, came on in the 14th. But Ganga off-drove his third ball for four in front of a sparse crowd before bad light halted proceedings.
England, were a bowler light with Matthew Hoggard off the field since Saturday because of a thigh problem and were also missing all-rounder Andrew Flintoff, out of this match due to a recurrence of a left ankle injury.
That England, in their first match under new coach Peter Moores, set a stiff chase owed much to Kevin Pietersen’s dashing 109 in a second innings total of 284-8 declared.
West Indies, who’d seen England pile up an imposing 553-5 declared in their first innings, avoided the follow-on but were bowled out for 437.
Their performance was all the more creditable given that two days of their three-day game against Somerset, their lone warm-up fixture in England, were washed out.
Panesar’s haul included five lbws — the first time this had been achieved in a Test innings by a spinner and only the fifth instance in all.
England’s first innings saw Matt Prior become the first England wicket-keeper to score a century on Test debut with a rapid 126 not out.
Paul Collingwood (111), Ian Bell (109 not out) and Alastair Cook (105) also reached three figures, four England batsmen scoring hundreds in the same Test innings for the first time in 69 years. — AFP
