Australia leave West Indies in their dust
Yes, that was a pun.
I think the West Indies is one of the least attacking and most patient attacks in the World. In an era when players seemingly like to get bat on ball, it makes sense to hang the ball wide. However, in modern cricket, bowlers have been going fuller and straighter, using the unpredictability of the wobble ball, but also just giving themselves more chance of LBWs.
What hasn’t changed even as seam bowlers deliver fuller, is the number of leaves.
It’s not exactly what I would have though, however, maybe this year has trended down so we may start to see that. We have seen batters change where they stand on the crease, but at the moment, not the amount of times they play the ball.
When the West Indies attack started to assemble with Kemar Roach’s comeback, Shannon Gabriel’s form surge and Jason Holder’s transformation, that was the period it was clear the West Indians were hanging the ball wider and waiting for players to come at them.
You can see that they completely changed their strategy from 2018 to 2019 on width. Some of this was also probably the change to the Dukes ball. it swings longer, so you don’t have to be afraid of wasting the new ball by bowling wide. But what is clear is that West Indies are now bowling a similar line to everyone else.
But there are days when you watch them when I think they want to be patient again.
You look at how often Australia left the ball today and you could think that is what happened here. In fact, David Warner’s wicket might have given the West Indies hope that Australia would chase more wide ones.
That didn’t happen, and Australia made a lot of runs.
One thing we need to factor in is that leaving in most places is done on width, but in Australia - and specifically Perth, it is done on bounce. The ball does hop there.
(In fact, look how much more it was bouncing than even the old WACA, which is shockingly low here.)
But West Indies were still being left at 34%. Which is high if you are playing on a trampoline, and a lot higher than you would expect at Perth - even accounting for day one.
They’re clearly a undermanned side who were always going to struggle in this series. But it feels going through the tape that they expected Australia to come harder at them.
It didn’t happen, and because of that day one went about as bad as anyone could have hoped.
Except the West Indies on 99.94 boys, who probably thought it could be worse.
