The Final Stand
Tue, May 13, '03
It was Tolkien, who in his masterpiece trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, described the epic battle at Helms Deep. There, the last host of the Mark of Rohan prepared to make a final stand against an enemy overwhelming in number and unmatched in its hatred. The West Indies cricket team, as they entered the Antigua Recreation Ground at the start of the final Test, would have found it easy to identify with those men of Rohan and the perils they faced.
"The world changes and all that was strong now proves unsure" were the doubts that beset the King of the Mark as he contemplated the impending assault. West Indies cricket was in the throes of a similar crisis of confidence, as they surveyed the foes arrayed against them. For they had seen the enemy over-run their defenses at Bourda, defy their brave resistance at the Queens Park Oval and finally defile their holy place, their Mecca in Barbados. The team had withdrawn as far as they could, and with their backs now most firmly against the wall, set about their final stand. No further retreat was possible, and if they were to be overcome, the wound to West Indies cricket would surely prove fatal.
They had manned the ramparts valiantly the night before, as the young openers Gayle and Smith saw off the new ball and 23 searching overs. All hope was not yet lost. As the Caribbean faithful looked for a potential savior, one figure loomed large: The prince who had regained his crown after years in exile, the rider in white, the wizard with his wand of willow, one Brian Charles Lara.
Matters seemed to be very much following script as the prince led a spirited counter-attack after their vanguard had perished; Smith, Gayle and Ganga all falling early in the fourth day. Then, in one over from McGill, Lara smashed two huge sixes, the second of which sailed majestically over the roofs of the topmost stand. The counter-attack was well and truly on. Exquisite drives, both straight and through cover, followed and belief began to flow back into the West Indian camp. Then disaster, the prince had fallen, the hour of doom was surely at hand!
Any readers of Tolkien in the suddenly chastened crowd might have taken heart in his story. For though the defenders of Middle Earth had majestic figures capable of casting fear into the hordes of Mordor, their task was but to distract the one true enemy. Their ultimate hopes of victory rested not with the princely, nor with the wise. No the enemy was to be defeated by two unlikely figures, previously overlooked almost entirely by the history books. Two characters that the enemy would underestimate at his peril, their strength of character concealed as it was by their unimposing presence.
So it was that Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ronnie Sarwan set about rewriting the history books. Sarwan looked in fine fettle from the moment he walked to the crease, driving gloriously through the covers, cutting the leg-spinner repeatedly to the point boundary and dispatching the bouncers from the quicker men emphatically. As one thumping hook off Brett Lee raced to the mid-wicket ropes, the locals were saying that surely one of the ancient warriors of West Indies cricket must have returned in his prime, and was now setting about their enemy.
Sarwan was tested in body and spirit as the enemy, sensing the turning tide, revealed its ugliness for all to see. The giant McGrath sought to impose himself, towering as he did over the young vice-captain. Yet the boy-man met the challenge, the spell was broken, and the words, while retaining their coarseness, lost their potency. Reduced to nothing more than empty bluster, McGrath was dispatched to patrol the boundary ropes, no more than a witness as Sarwan reached a magnificent century. Then, as his prince had before, Sarwan fell launching an audacious attack on his foe. Some may say the madness of battle afflicted them both, but then surely one had to be mad to believe that the West Indies could turn back not only these all-conquering foes, but also the very weight of history.
All the while, Chanderpaul was quietly laying waste to the enemy, like a long distance sniper, his bullet finding its mark before the harsh retort of the gunpowder could be heard. The character of Samwise Gamgee could well have been based on Shivnarine Chanderpaul, so obvious are the similarities. A fisherman's son, clumsy maybe with the spoken word, but with the rare intelligence to know always that what must be done, must be done, no matter how much one might wish that the task had fallen to another. As Sam took over the burden from his master at the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, so Chanderpaul now moved in to fill the breach.
Like Sarwan, he was particularly severe on anything short, pulling with authority and yet defending with a comforting solidity. Aided by Omari Banks, whose size and composure belied his tender age, Chanderpaul turned the restive Antiguan crowd, from the frenzy of despair into the passion of hope. One poignant moment succinctly summarized the resistance that had begun a day earlier: Chanderpaul, upon reaching his personal milestone, knelt down and kissed the earth in a silent pact that as long as a certain Shivnarine Chanderpaul remained, these lands would be defended.
Yet often the dawn sweeps away the despair of the night. So it proved for the Australians as Chanderpaul was finally dismissed on the fifth day, having added only a single to his overnight score. It took a peach of a delivery from Brett Lee to bring his downfall, angling in from around the wicket before jagging away to find the edge of Chanderpaul's bat.
Victory, if it came, would require a complete team effort and Vasbert Drakes now faced the enemy, snarling at each delivery like a caged tiger. Though overmatched against the pace of Lee's bouncers, he attempted the hook on more than one occasion, escaping fortuitously each time. With Banks remaining a solid presence at the other end, it was Drakes who would bring up the winning runs, piercing a packed off-side field with the boundary that brought forth an outpouring of West Indian celebration.
History was made, the enemy vanquished. The wash remained confined to the gentle surf lapping against the shores of the picturesque Antiguan beaches. West Indian fans stumbled out into the light, our eyes blinking in its unaccustomed brilliance.
Did it really happen, with this team, one of the weakest in West Indies history? Against the best team of all time, or so they say in their Heralds, and their Wisdens? We can laugh softly at that claim, we know what Greenidge and Haynes, Richards, and Lloyd, Marshall, Holding, Roberts and Garner would have done with these imposters. We have not all forgotten our history. Now we know also that in the future men like Gayle and Smith, Ganga, Lara, Sarwan and Chanderpaul, Banks, Dillon and Lawson will do likewise.
Oh, and that pressure we felt in our collective gut over the last four days was just the tremendous centrifugal force, generated by West Indies cricket finally turning a very long corner.