Adams & Chanderpaul put up a blockade

By Ted Corbett

BIRMINGHAM, JUNE 16. We saw the other side of West Indies cricket at Edgbaston this afternoon when Jimmy Adams and Shivnarine Chanderpaul put up a blockade of such monumental proportions that they must have come close to emptying a ground full almost to its 18,000 capacity.

Of course most of those who had walked through the leafy lanes round Edgbaston, pausing to wonder at the expensive housing, the posh cars and all the other trappings of wealth wanted to see either England bowl out West Indies cheaply or Brian Lara plunder its attack.

In fact neither happened although Darren Gough took his tally to three wickets in the innings and 150 in his career when he bowled Sherwin Campbell and set up Lara for a catch behind the wicket with one of his best spells.

Lara waited 12 minutes before he received a ball but he then hit two fours off successive balls. Campbell began impatiently as if he had a train to catch or a wager on the run rate. In the first half hour 43 runs came and soon afterwards an exquisitely timed drive past the bowler for four; a boundary from a forward defensive stroke.

No doubt then that the man can still bat in the company of angels. Another four, from the striving Ed Giddins, came after he seemed to pause in mid stroke to find an exact hole in the field; and even his defensive leaves were a delight to watch; a matador near the horns. One hundred came up in the 29th over of the innings, and by noon 68 had been added in the hour. There had been no sign of a wicket but when Gough came back at the Press Box End the atmosphere changed. We had been promised a heatwave - with apologies to anyone who lives in Chennai who may think that 30 degrees is a cool summer's day - but instead the clouds lingered and the temperatures stayed in the low 20s, conditions which fitted Gough like a close-cut tee- shirt.

First he made Campbell into his 150th victim - just 300 behind Courtney Walsh let us remember - with a ball that nipped back off the pitch and left Campbell stumbling like a man who has celebrated too well. Twelve runs and four overs later he had set up Lara with bouncers, with a full-pitch ball that almost got through and a yorker. That seemed to unsettle the great man and the sharp outswinger that followed found him groping forward and edging the ball to Alec Stewart.

He walked without a backward glance and with him went the last chance that West Indies would race to a big total and roll England over in three days. Cue for a long defensive haul by Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Jimmy Adams, experts in the art of avoiding a stroke, mean as a convention full of misers and, for all Walsh and Ambrose probably address them as ``sonny'' with all the experience gained in 88 Tests.

By lunch they had nudged the score to 149, and afterwards they dug a hole so deep that the England bowlers could not see them never mind bowl them out. Nasser Hussain switched bowlers and fielders but could not manage to disturb the even tenor of their ways even if there was a quarter chance to Nick Knight at close gully to Robert Croft's off spin and one or two minor mishaps, including an appeal by Stewart after he had dropped the ball and then caught it between his calves. Sadly the ball had bounced.

Five minutes before tea Chanderpaul had such an uncharacteristic rush of blood that the crowd were silent for a second. He took a flash at a ball that was running twice as far from his off stump as most of those he had ignored for three hours and directed the ball straight to Stewart. At 231 for five West Indies was 52 ahead and still tantalisingly close to dominating the game without being sure that resilient England had been buried.

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