OF all the harrowing days the West Indies have endured on the Test grounds of the world over the past couple of decades, and, heaven knows, they have been plentiful and persistent, none was as horrific as the opening day of the series against Australia in Hobart on Thursday.
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West Indies collapsed to their second-heaviest defeat in Tests against Australia as James Pattinson marked his return with a five-wicket haul that destroyed the top order.
Australian captain Steve Smith enforced the follow-on on Saturday morning after Hazlewood (four for 45) helped end the Windies’ first dig at nine for 223.
Adam Voges was named Man of the Match for his unbeaten 269 in the match-turning partnership with fellow Western Australian Shaun Marsh.
Shaun Marsh or Joe Burns appear set to be dropped for Australia’s second Test against West Indies.
Pattinson (4-19) took up where Josh Hazlewood left off in a West Indies first innings dominated by century-maker Darren Bravo (108).
“Every time I ran into bowl I was just hoping and waiting for that bag of wickets and that confidence that I’ve been lacking over the last couple of years”.
Paceman James Pattinson said Sunday he did away with his remodelled bowling action and returned to his old approach to spearhead Australia to an emphatic innings victory over the West Indies in Hobart.
Brathwaite took four successive boundaries off Mitchell Marsh to race through the eighties but was denied a ton as a Hazlewood off-cutter bowled him on 94.
“I just ran in and wanted to bowl fast like I did when I first came on the scene”, Pattinson said.
The West Indies have won just four of their last 21 Tests and went into the first Hobart Test on the back of a humbling 10-wicket loss in their only warm-up game to a modest Cricket Australia XI.
Six years ago, Darren Ganga, then Trinidad and Tobago captain who had 48 Tests for the West Indies between 1998 and 2007, made a similar point.
Pattinson, playing in his first Test since March previous year after recovering from back and hamstring issues, spearheaded the Australian assault to rip apart the threadbare Windies batting. “We have to exercise patience a lot more when we bowl and we’ll be a lot more successful”.
However CA and Kookaburra have taken a two-fold approach to player feedback that the seam was hard to pick up and general visibility was at certain times hard, by investigating the possibility of changing the seam’s colour to “jet black” and eliminating the “glow” of the pink ball.
“You try not to let teams play well against you, and that’s what we seem to do really especially at home”.
“I thought the bowlers bowled terrific”. “He is best suited at number five, he’s played some very good cricket at five, he did last summer as well”, Smith said.
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Australia were still comfortable and were able to win the game by an innings and 212 runs, and the game was finished on the third day, which means that Smith will get an extra rest for two more days.
