ENG vs WI | Ageas Bowl Day 3 Talking Points - The Shai Hope frustration and Dom Bess’ scorching questions

07/10/2020

The West Indies batsmen rose to the challenge to dig deep, and eventually they put up a demanding total on the board at the end of Day 3, securing a lead of 114 runs in the first innings. While Dom Bess should be proud of his performance today, Jofra Archer has a lot of introspection to do.

Brief Scores: England 15/0 (Rory Burns 10* and Gabriel 0/5) trail West Indies 318 all-out in 102 overs (Kraigg Brathwaite 65, Shane Dowrich 61; Ben Stokes 4/49; James Anderson 3-62) by 99 runs

What is ailing Shai Hope in Test Cricket?

An undisputed champion in limited-overs cricket, Shai Hope does things in his own way. He has never bought into the idea of playing free and flair cricket, for he believed his outdated run-scoring methods has a measuring amount of logic that is still valid in 50-overs cricket. But why has it been that the method that should have set him apart as a better Test batsman has failed to work completely, with his average still dwindling around 27 after 32 Test matches? Why has the fall from grace - especially after that Headingley Test of 2017, when he became the first-ever cricketer to have scored a century in each innings of a first-class match at the venue - so dramatic?

In three years since that memorable day for West Indies Test cricket, Hope has scored eight hundreds and averaged 55.52 in ODIs but, contrastingly, has averaged 27.23 in red-ball cricket. The most comprehensive factor that I can think of also lies in the same Test.

Both of his Headingley hundreds came at No. 5 and No.4, but to satiate the demands of the side, he was then promoted to bat at No.3 to protect Shane Dowrich and Jason Holder from being exposed. However, as his first-down average of 18.53 suggests, Hope has largely carried the role Joe Denly is carrying for England, with lesser success. While the first Test has already been a failure for Hope, Phil Simmons and Roddy Estwick would need to get him back on track to bring about a complete transformation. He is too good a player to be wasted and West Indies can least afford to lose out on his contributions in Test cricket.

Wickets change nature overnight in dramatic fashion

When Ben Stokes chose to bat first on a wicket which was undercover for the major part of the last 48 hours, the decision seemed like a faulty one but his reasoning was more than convincing. Stokes felt the wicket would slow down to a large extent to make batting difficult in the fourth innings and if the small sample size of the first two innings was anything to go by, Stokes actually hit the nail on the head. After pacers dominated the proceedings on the second day, Dom Bess showed why the spinners have a role to play in the entirety of the match, which would surely keep Roston Chase interested in the third innings.

Bess, who was struggling to find a place in his county side last year after a Test appearance in 2018, worked with Rangana Herath in Mumbai to unlock his potential to perform well in Test cricket, which was on show today in Southampton. With a side-arm action and a settled drift, as my colleague Anirudh pointed out, that resembled more Nathan Lyon than Bess himself, the Somerset spinner played to the slowness of the wicket and gradually took his spin off to ensure the batsmen had the big problem of playing him out comfortably, especially from the crease. That, in a way, spells trouble for the visitors despite the 114-run lead at the end of Day 3 because they would invariably have to chase in the fourth innings.

Did Jofra Archer pay for over slackness

Such has been Jofra Archer’s persona that even a single indifferent performance has always ended up doing massive harm to his reputation. After toiling hard on the unforgivable Kiwi tracks earlier this year, Archer's sheen went off but social media was lit, feasting on his failure left, right and centre. However, the Coronavirus pandemic-induced break and the subsequent preference of him over Stuart Broad ensured the expectation level rose a few notches once again. But what do we have in our hands right now? A listless, clueless and uninspiring display of pace bowling on a track that was not completely dead?

Especially after Shannon Gabriel, an almost similar kind of hit-the-deck bowler with less swing ability, had laid it out in the first innings, Archer should have tried to bowl more short balls in order to back his secondary ability. However, he kept on bowling full, making things easier for Kraigg Brathwaite and Roston Chase, until the reality dawned on him with Shane Dowrich coming out to bat. That contest between the Archer and Dowrich had some sense of respectability but the plot had already been lost for the Barbados-born Sussex pacer, who had been left to rue his performance on what was a field day for the batsmen.