West Indies v England [1st Test]

[kompressaur]

this starts about 14:30 on Wednesday i believe. England 11/10 favourites. Are they playing in the West Indies? I went to the west indies with a girlfriend once.

[Mike TV]

Jamacia komp?

[kompressaur]

No she went on her own accord Mike boom boom

[Pie-chucker]

Monty remains 4-1 generally to be top series wicket taker.

Get on before the Windies 1st innings in First Test. Pitch taking spin and Monty to get off to a flyer with 9 or 10 wkts in match.

[Winrew]

Terrible stuff ...

[slick]

commiting suicide now too by the look of it, why is it that it only seems to happen to England .

[rcgills]

What choice have they got though, Slick? Tomorrow's the last day, and they only had a 2 run first innings lead. They've got to just hit out until around lunch tomorrow and see whether they can bowl the West Indies out in 2 sessions. Very unlikely, but there's no point just playing out a draw now and losing the series 1-0.

[Quandram]

Yep - win or bust and mercifully it looks like we couldn't give a stuff if we lose the series 1-0 or 2-0.

[kompressaur]

27 March 2009
13:30 England (10/11) West Indies (1) 102%

[kompressaur]

This is still going on i see

We tipped England at 6/4 to win the one-day series against the West Indies and following Sunday's 'opening' match at Bristol we've absolutely no reason to change our view.

Indeed there's a strong temptation to go in again for the Three Lions to win the third and final game at Edgbaston on Tuesday, despite the odds being no better than 4/7.

For the performances of the two sides in Bristol could hardly have been more contrasting.

England were superb from the outset - Stuart Broad and James Anderson leading the way with the ball, Andrew Strauss captaining with imagination and flair, and then Ravi Bopara and Paul Collingwood helping the Three Lions cruise to a six-wicket victory with fully 14 overs to spare.

But the West Indies were a complete shambles.

They were never at the races in the Test series but we had expected an improved showing in the one-dayers - yet what we got was a new low.
Too many of the key batsmen seemed to want to try and slog their way out of trouble, the fielding was laughable at times, while Jerome Taylor - comically run out when batting - set the tone for the bowling with two wides in his first three deliveries.

It's therefore impossible to make any sort of case for them on Tuesday and anyone who hasn't already got England onside at 6/4 could do far worse than snap up the 4/7 because there's a gulf between the pair right now.

However despite all their problems there is one area where the Windies still hold sway and that's on the 'most sixes' market.

They hit three maximums to England's one on Sunday and backers of Chris Gayle's men on this front have collected in seven of the last eight ODIs between the pair.
In the recent series in the Caribbean the Windies cleared the ropes no fewer than 26 times in five matches compared to England's seven.

Since then of course England's most prolific six-hitter in Kevin Pietersen has been forced onto the sidelines through injury which tilts things even further in the Windies' favour so it's a surprise to see them on offer at 10/11 in places.
Finally we can't resist going low on Denesh Ramdin's player performance.
The Windies' wicketkeeper had a shocker in Bristol, scoring just eight with the bat and failing to take a catch or bag a stumping.

On bet365's scoring (1pt per run, 10pts per catch, 25pts per stumping) that equates to a make-up of 8 and that's very much in keeping with his ODI tallies against England this year - 22, 26, 10, 11 and 21 were the others.

The line is set at under/over 25.5 and even though that's low for a keeper we still believe there's only one way to go.