It will be scouring the globe for Logie’s successor

It will be scouring the globe for Logie’s successor.As Lara also noted, he did not covet or seek to return to the job from which he resigned after two years in 2000. They simply make it appear worse.In any other sport, the captain and coach would feel compelled to tender their resignations, if they had not already been demanded by their employers. His sensible off-spin lifted his team’s spirits before lunch and he was 18 away from becoming the first Test cricketer to claim five wickets and score a hundred in the same day when he also fell to a dubious umpiring call.Yet questionable umpiring decisions, even as crucial as these, have nothing to do with the continuing miserable state of West Indies cricket. Hair has a reputation for being unsympathetic to batsmen who turn the game into a version of football. That’s all well and good, but he must stick to the letter of the lbw law.Gayle enjoyed an outstanding day.

The difference between the teams, firmly established in the Caribbean in the spring, is such that the West Indies are once again in danger of the whitewash that only England and India of the major Test teams are still to administer.
Most of the reasons for their plight are of their own making. But the tourist’s efforts to be more competitive have been further handicapped in the two Tests so far by umpiring misjudgement in decisions against batsmen on whom they heavily depend.Yesterday, Brian Lara, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Chris Gayle were the victims of further dubious verdicts. Lara is the game’s premier batsman, and Chanderpaul one of the most resolute. They were both capable of carrying England well into the last day, if not to the end, and rekindling the spark shown in the field before lunch.Instead, Lara was given out caught off his pad and Chanderpaul judged lbw when so far forward umpire Darrell Hair could not possibly make a certain judgement that the ball would hit the stumps. Who needs a Shane Warne or a Muttiah Muralitharan when you have an Ashley Giles in your team? These were the views emanating from the stands here yesterday as the local boy spun England to an emphatic 256-run victory over the West Indies.
No, seriously.

Giles would be the first to admit that this pair of great bowlers are in a different league to himself but this has not stopped the Warwickshire spinner enjoying a remarkable run which has seen him take 24 wickets in three Test matches. And who knows, if Giles carries on like this, scores a few runs and takes a couple of blinding catches at slip, he could be the next Andrew Flintoff.But on another day of joy for England’s supporters – even though it was slightly disappointing to see only 14,000 of the 20,500 seats filled – the honour of wrapping up the second Test did not go to Giles. This went to James Anderson, who knocked Jermaine Lawson’s off-stump out of the ground with a beautiful in-swinging yorker when the tourists had reached 222. He will be replaced by the Trinidad and Tobago left-arm spinner Dave Mohammed, who was expected to arrive in England today.. “I was asked back into this job and I’m not going to fling it away,” he said. “Whether I stay in the job is not up to me, but so long as I am I will do it to the best of my ability and continue to fight to get West Indies cricket back to where it should be.”The fast bowler Tino Best will miss the remainder of the series after suffering a stress reaction in his back. I know I got nailed a bit for my performances in the West Indies, but since last September I’ve got 49 wickets and I’ve only got 112 in my career, so it has been a good year for me.”Lara, whose leadership has been criticised during this match, most notably by former captain Sir Viv Richards, dismissed the notion of standing down.

“It has to be the most enjoyable time of my career, certainly the most successful. But Ashley Giles had a strong case for collecting the honour for a second straight match after taking nine for 122, the first England player to finish with nine in consecutive matches since Tony Lock in 1958.”If I had imagined I would have been disappointed in two Test matches running not to get 10 wickets, I would have dismissed the thought as dreaming,” Giles said. If you win games from the kind of positions we have been in during the last 12 months, it gives you extra belief.”Flintoff clinched the man of the match award after adding crucial wickets to his first innings 167. We felt we needed a 150 partnership and we believed that in Andrew Flintoff and Geraint Jones we had the men to do it. In this match, even though we were 260 for 5 in the first innings, which was below par, we still believed we would get a big total. England have their sights on winning all seven home Test matches this summer after yesterday’s victory ensured that they cannot lose the series against the West Indies.
No England side has won seven consecutive Tests for 75 years, but the current captain, Michael Vaughan, basking in the satisfaction of following a 3-0 win against New Zealand with a 2-0 lead against Brian Lara’s struggling team, said he could sense a clean sweep was within his side’s grasp.”You don’t win any Test match without working very hard and we respect the West Indies, because any side which includes Brian Lara is very dangerous,” he said.”But you can sense that our players now expect to win.