Marlon Samuels, James Anderson Provide Temporary Relief from Tedious Pitch
Cloudy skies. Rain delays. The playing surface close to the ocean and beside a lush, green hill.
In such conditions, the sort seen in Grenada on Tuesday, there's a very particular type of player you want on hand. There's also a particular type of player you typically don't want.
Fitting into the first category is James Anderson.
Fitting into the second, we think, is Marlon Samuels.
Anderson is a master of swing. England's all-time leading wicket-taker, he's the ultimate manipulator of a cricket ball. He can move it both ways. He does it with supreme control, swinging it late, very late. And he does it without a discernible change in action.
Samuels, meanwhile, is an unfulfilled talent. A player once full of potential but who averages 35 in Test cricket. He doesn't move his feet, instead plays with his hands. He flashes at wide balls and is known for headless moments.
Samuels is one of those cricketers who's regularly the focus of style-over-substance debates. A player who often seems to have it the wrong way round: he can do the hard things well but the easy things badly.
He's a player not built for cloudy skies. For play after rain delays. For the conditions seen in Grenada.
Or maybe he is and we've got it wrong. Maybe he needs the going to be hard so he can do those hard things he does well. Maybe, like Anderson, he falls into that first category.
On Tuesday, it had initially seemed that it was the Englishman who was ready to rip this contest apart. Like end it almost immediately.
It was Anderson at his best, and that doesn't even do it justice.
In the game's first over, he had three slips and a gully in place, as well as a short leg. The crafty seamer, in full control, took six balls away from Kraigg Brathwaite: gentle and on a good length; gentle and full; slightly sharper and full; gentle again and shorter; bang on a good length; faster and full.
Brathwaite blocked the first, squirted the second to gully, left the third, played and missed the fourth, nervously poked at the fifth and edged the sixth short of second slip.
Anderson was weaving his web.
Minutes later, he returned for his second over with Brathwaite on strike once more. Having shown him a sextet of out-swingers, he brought in another slip—a fourth. The West Indian readied himself for more of the same.
Then, hooping in-swinger; leg-stump removed. Just supreme. A remarkable display of skill, intelligence, control, mind games and exploitation of favourable conditions.
You saw it and thought: this could be over in a hurry, Jimmy's in the mood.
But somehow, thanks to Samuels, it didn't unravel like that. The West Indian, in at 28 for two, left his first seven balls. He used up 21 to get his first run; 32 to strike his first boundary.
After swallowing up 66 deliveries, he'd only reached 17. And he was doing the things you didn't expect him to: defending compactly, playing balls under his eyes, being watchful outside off-stump and showing a willingness to let balls go.
Then, Moeen Ali bowled Samuels a rank short ball. He smashed it through point for four. From that point onward, he accumulated his next 77 runs from 120 balls. His last 50 came from 47.
By stumps, he'd reached an unbeaten 94. And he'd done it with a blend of defiance and counter-attacking—the sort of mix perfect for these circumstances, but also just the sort we'd assumed Samuels was incapable of conjuring.
Maybe he does belong to the first group, Anderson's group, and we just didn't know it.
It was his day. Well, Marlon's and Jimmy's—or at least it should have been. But, unfortunately, that wasn't the reality. Not at all. Instead, that pair simply broke the tedium.
Tuesday, aside from Anderson's seven-ball exhibition and Samuel's rearguard innings, was dull. Frustratingly so. And all because of a needlessly lifeless surface.
Seventy overs were needed for 188 runs. The rate of scoring was dreadful. After the prodigious early swing on offer with the new ball, there was nothing for the bowlers. No pace to enliven the day.
Just dead and flat—a theme we've seen all too often and which has marred recent marquee series featuring India, England and Australia.
"Pretty disappointing wicket in Grenada. Would you spend several thousand to watch this?" asked ESPN Cricinfo's George Dobell on Twitter. "Questioning if it is worth my Sky [Sports] subscription tbh [to be honest]" was one of the telling replies.
But there was also a more striking answer: "People suggest radical changes like four-day tests etc., when all u [sic] need is better pitches to produce good cricket," said one commenter.
Nail. Head.
In the meantime, we'll simply have to rely on performances like those from Samuels and Anderson to break the tedium.
