Same bat time, same bat channel. That’s the feeling for Australia at the moment, as normal programming followed normal programming: top order failure, middle order digging the team out of a hole, a score that shouldn’t be enough against a proper batting side but might well be enough against a vulnerable one. As the second Test against West Indies began on the small island of Grenada on Thursday, a reasonable start of 47 without loss abruptly became 50-3, and 110-5, before finally recovering to 286 all out, on a hot tropical day when occasional rain bursts created short delays, and bad light prevented a late tilt against West Indies’ top order.
Given how rarely the Grenada National Stadium is used, the surface was an unknown quantity. West Indies picked a fifth quick, Australia shrugged and picked the same four bowlers they would choose for St Moritz ice cricket if the chance came up. Dry, patchy, straw coloured, that pitch initially looked the sort where a couple of batters in need of a score could cash in. The pace looked slow, attempted bouncers barely reached the waist. Sam Konstas laid into the first of those he received, Usman Khawaja soon followed with some pulled boundaries of his own.
But the one advantage for the bowlers was a little Dukes swing. After bringing up his 6,000th Test run, Khawaja’s struggles against pace continued, inswing from Alzarri Joseph nailing him on the back pad for 16. New inclusion Anderson Phillip doesn’t push the speed gun like his teammates, but had the ball moving both ways through the air, and four balls later had Konstas trying an ill-advised, lavish drive and coughing up the edge for 25.
The collapse became 3-3 when Steve Smith was undone by an absence of bounce. Not normally a player who would look to hook early in an innings, he didn’t get the length for that shot from Alzarri Joseph, more a length you’d expect him to drop off the hip for a single. Instead Smith went cross-bat, up and under, looking to lift it for six. And instead of fine leg throwing back the ball for one run, Phillip held the catch just inside the rope. Returning from injury as the man to bolster the batting, Smith walked off after six balls with his trademark look of confusion.
It feels as though Travis Head is always walking in at three for bugger all, and the numbers confirm that the struggle is real. When batting at five or lower, Head has been called on with the score at 60 or less in 29 innings out of 89, basically a third of his hits. In the last 18 months it rises to nearly half the time, 10 innings out of 22. He often makes runs in those situations, an absolver of top-order sins. This time he did half that job, 29 out of the next 60, a man with shade of Boony teaming up with the two-metre brigade of Cameron Green and Beau Webster.
Konstas, Khawaja, and Green form Australia’s main concerns of the moment, and none were allayed on the day. Green’s score of 26 was useful, but pushing hard at the ball undid him again, twice over. Five balls before lunch his mistimed drive at Jayden Seales was dropped at cover, and instead of navigating to the break, he went again and was caught at gully.
So with Head caught behind off a lifter after the break, it was over to Australia’s two firewalls once again, Webster and Alex Carey, with 60 and 63 in contrasting styles. Carey was happy to counter aggressively, carving behind point. Webster took his time, partly by choice and partly forced to by disciplined bowling. West Indies stuck to their task, prising out Carey then the tail, pushing Webster to take the chance of a second run and end up short. Joseph finished with 4-61 while the other four quicks shared the rest of the wickets around.
The end came with dusk settling over the seaside ground, and an hour before a richly pastel sunset. In his 100th Test, Kraigg Braithwaite would have been relieved that all that was required of him that evening was a walk to the middle, soaking up some applause, before the umpires told him he could walk back off again. With no nasty late burst, the examination will wait until the clear light of morning. Not that daylight helped Australia’s first session much. With the visitors repeating their program from Barbados, it’s up to West Indies to offer something new to watch.