The West Indies cricketeers astonish England

I haven't been following cricket as much as I used to, and I commonly posted about cricket here on the blog. Truth is, I really only followed English cricket because the Daily Mail includes news about cricket in their sports section. And I just pay attention to Test cricket and not the shorter one-day events, which are reputedly more entertaining (but they aren't part of the lore, history, and heroism of Test cricket). Oh, I occasionally tried to figure out who was ranked where, and whether or not Tendulkar had gotten 100 centuries, but by and large I just followed what England was doing. Later this year they go down to Australia for the Ashes Test series, which I usually pay attention to.

They've been getting ready for that by playing their usual summer Test series. Most recently, they've been playing the West Indies, which is not the power it used to be, even though it has a rich history and some of cricket's most noted players. In the first Test, England handled the "Windies" pretty easily. And in the second Test, at Headingley, despite a slow start, they looked to be headed toward another win. They built up a 322-run lead in their second innings (each team bats twice), and late on the fourth day of the five-day test, they "declared" at that point, which meant that the Windies had to get 323 runs to win, 322 to tie, and anything less than that would be a loss. Going after a point total is called a "chase".

Well, the Windies chased, and caught. It was surprising, it was good cricket, and England was a little bit miffed.

Here's the day 5 recap. But basically, two youngsters from Barbados, Kraigg Braithwaite and Shai Hope, scored 95 runs and 118 runs, respectively, and that was what did it.

There's one more Test in this series to go. Anything less than a series win would be a disappointment for the Brits. We'll see who spins and who misses.