Hope helped WI pulled off stunning rare Win over England…
It was one of the great Test matches to remember.
Headingley has seen some remarkable final days and West Indies created their own extraordinary tale by chasing down 322 to level the series. Shai Hope achieved what Kraigg Brathwaite narrowly missed, becoming the first batsman to score twin hundreds on the ground in first-class cricket and, at 6.43pm, with the floodlights illuminating the ground almost as much as the day-night Test last week, Hope tucked the ball through square to complete one of the most unexpected redemption stories in the game’s history.
Such was the application and skill of West Indies’ batting, anchored by the 144-run third-wicket stand between Brathwaite and Hope that, once they got through the morning session, the prospect of victory was closer than many would accept. There was constantly talk of how quickly it could change, but the collapse never came. At tea, moments after losing Brathwaite for 95, they needed 123 off 35 overs; when Roston Chase was superbly caught by substitute Mason Crane at mid-on, 76 off 19.5 overs.
There was a chance with the new ball looming and the light fading that it could still unravel for West Indies, but Chase’s wicket may actually have helped. He was finding the old ball hard to time, and it brought in Jermaine Blackwood who chanced his arm (or batted normally for himself). He clubbed two tension-easing fours before, in brilliantly brazen style, hammering James Anderson’s second ball with the new ball straight for six. He was stumped with two runs needed, but his 41 off 45 balls ensured England never regained a foothold. From losing 19 wickets in one day, to this. Their first win in England since Edgbaston in 2000.
Hope brought up his century from 175 balls – the second fifty proving much harder work off 105 deliveries – and on 106, with 37 runs required, he benefited from the 13th drop catch of the match when Alastair Cook at first slip spilled a top-edged cut. The last West Indies batsman to score two centuries in a Test was Kieran Powell, against Bangladesh in 2012, and Hope’s performance – from a man who averaged 19 before this Test – epitomized more than anything the team’s revival. Those who paid £10 to get in witnessed an ‘I-was-there’ moment.
Missed chances, though, proved costly from early in the day. In the fourth over, Cook had also dropped Brathwaite when he had 4. Another chance came from Brathwaite, on 29, amid bizarre circumstances when he popped a return catch to Broad which burst through the hands and cannoned into the non-striker’s stumps with Kyle Hope well out of his crease. A wicket, but the more valuable one would have been Brathwaite’s, as one of the players with the ability to defy England for long periods. It was 40 overs before he offered another chance, edging Moeen Ali to slip, and by then the groundwork for victory had been laid.
Hope’s innings was magnificent. His first boundary was a rifled back-foot straight from a short-of-a-length delivery by Woakes and his fifty came off 70 balls, a slightly quicker rate than Brathwaite and he ensured Root could never dry up the scoring. As in the first session of the second day, it was an examination of both batsman’s techniques against a moving ball and the pair also played Moeen smartly to nullify his threat. After their 246-run partnership in the first innings, it was the first time since Brian Lara and Ramnaresh Sarwan at Colombo in 2000-01 that the same West Indian batsmen had shared two hundred stands in a match.
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