Windies look to sweep series

Just weeks after being trounced by South Africa, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and his embattled crew administered a drubbing of their own in Barbados and the dent to the Pakistani psyche would have been far worse but for Shahid Afridi’s rage against the dying light on the fourth day.

Regular skipper Inzamam-ul-Haq, who returns to the fold after serving out a one Test ban, has hinted that Shahid Afridi may bat down the order in the second Test at Kingston as Pakistan attempt to bounce back.

Inzamam, added that there will be two changes to the side with him and Shoaib Malik returning to the fray.

"Afridi will bat as per the requirement of the team but most probably down the order in the Kingston Test," Inzamam was quoted as saying in The News, a Pakistan-based daily. "He scored a hundred batting at No 5 (sic)."

Afridi batted at No 6 in the second innings of the game and hammered a blistering hundred but his record is much better when he has opened the innings, when he averages 37.16 and has set the tempo for many a Pakistan charge.

Deprived of the services of Inzamam — to suspension — and Yousuf Youhana who returned home tending to his ailing father, the Pakistani batting was a shambles on a shirt-front at the Kensington Oval, a surface where the incomparable Brian Lara caressed and bludgeoned his way to 178 — in two innings — from just 172 balls.

Pakistan were undone in the first Test by the slingshots of Fidel Edwards — whose subsequent breakdown has seen him replaced by Tino Best — and the seemingly innocuous offspin of Chris Gayle, and also by their own refusal to pick Shoaib Akhtar.

On a placid pitch where only extreme pace was likely to breach a batsman’s defences, neither the tireless Rana Naved-ul-Hasan nor the gangling Shabbir Ahmed looked remotely like running through a side and neither offered even a smidgen of the intimidatory air that Shoaib brings with him.

The bowling travails were worsened by the contempt with which Lara treated Danish Kaneria. Before the tour, Inzamam had talked of Kaneria being his trump card, but Lara — who has pulverised as great a spinner as Muttiah Muralitharan — quickly set about showing that it’s one thing to talk the talk and quite another to walk it.

Ominously for Pakistan, West Indies romped to victory with only Lara and Chanderpaul — utterly assured, and as ugly as ever during his second-innings 153 - making sizable contributions. The likes of Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Wavell Hinds will be anxious not to miss out if Sabina Park offers similar batting delights.

There has been Jamaican delight in plentiful measure for West Indies down the years. Since the genesis of the pace quartet in the mid-70s, they have lost here only three times — twice to England (1989-90 and last year) and once to Australia (1994-95).