Newsprint never tastes so very good, but a lot of people at Headingley were happy enough to eat their words on Saturday. West Indies, written off here, there and everywhere else, are in charge of the second Test. Kraigg Brathwaite and Shai Hope put on 246 runs for the fourth wicket. It was West Indies’ sixth-highest partnership in England, their best here in Leeds since Garry Sobers and Seymour Nurse put on 265 in 1966.
For once, then, these West Indies players find themselves namechecked alongside some of the famous men that came before them without suffering in the comparison.
Brathwaite batted for just over six hours. In the 2000s, every kid on the cricket team at his school, Combermere in Barbados, wanted to bat like Brian Lara. Except Brathwaite. His hero was Shivnarine Chanderpaul. A lot of good cricketers came through Combermere around that time. Carlos Brathwaite was there, so was Chris Jordan, Shane Dowrich and Jomel Warrican.
But it was Brathwaite who set a series of records in junior cricket – 122 on his debut for West Indies Under-15 team, then 73 on his first-class debut for Barbados when he was only 16. Batting all the while in the spirit, if not the inimitably crabby style, of his idol Chanderpaul. His coach in that Under-15 team even grumbled about how slowly he had scored.
Eight years later, at Headingley on an Englishman’s idea of a midsummer day – sunny but not so warm that anyone wanted to linger long in the shade – Brathwaite batted from late morning through to early evening, before he was finally out, bowled by Stuart Broad for 134. Chanderpaul could not have done it any better himself. Half an hour or so before lunch, Brathwaite even removed one of the bails from his stumps, bent over and used the handle of his bat to thump it down into the ground to mark his guard. Which was a trick Chanderpaul learned when he was batting on the hard ground of Unity Village in Guyana, and a trick Brathwaite picked up from him in turn, an affectionate imitation of Chanderpaul’s affectation.
Of course, Chanderpaul was well capable of playing lofted shots; he once hit a Test century off only 69 balls after all. It was just that, more often than not, he chose not to. And Brathwaite allowed himself the odd flourish too, in between all those leaves, blocks, pushes and prods.
In the main, Brathwaite plays like a man who knows his own limitations. And the umpires’ too. He called for three reviews in his innings: one after he was given out lbw against Broad, when the ball had hit his inside edge; a second when he was given out lbw again, to Moeen Ali, when the ball had hit him outside the line; and a third when he was apparently caught behind, though the ball had not actually touched his bat.
The delivery from Moeen was a particularly wicked one, which spun sharply in from outside off. Alarmed, Brathwaite decided to come down the wicket to Moeen’s very next delivery and clobber it for six over long-on, a shot he repeated in the next over for four more.
He popped that stroke back in his pocket until later in the day, when he was on 96, and decided to used it again to belt Tom Westley down the ground for six more.
He had done something, then, that even Chanderpaul never managed to do. He had made a Test century at Headingley. Brathwaite was the first West Indian to do it since Larry Gomes in 1980. The second followed soon afterwards, as Hope was only 15 minutes behind him.
It was Brathwaite’s sixth Test hundred, but Hope’s first. Brathwaite is only 24, but he has played 39 Tests, which makes him an old hand in this West Indies team. Hope, in a fine piece of nominative determinism, has been maintaining exactly that since he made his debut in 2015. He is the more stylish of the two – he plays shots that make people purr – and if he can marry his technique with a little of Brathwaite’s self-discipline, he will grow into a very good batsman indeed.
The two of them were conspicuously delighted for each other. Hope celebrated Brathwaite’s hundred almost as if it was his own, which speaks of the bonds that have grown between these players since their defeat last week. Whatever they said to each other in their team meetings in the days between these two Tests, it has worked so well that England are reeling, 71 runs behind and five wickets still to take.
