Lara's 153 not out: the one-wicket Test at Kensington Oval
Chasing 308 on a wearing Bridgetown pitch, West Indies lost their top order in a rush. Brian Lara batted through to 153 not out, found last-wicket support from Courtney Walsh, and West Indies won by a single wicket with Australia's attack unable to find the final breakthrough.
A series already turning
West Indies arrived in Barbados for the third Test of the 1999 series against Australia having already lived through one of the worst days in their cricket history and one of the best. In Trinidad they had been bowled out for 51, their lowest Test total, inside a single session. A week later in Jamaica, Brian Lara answered with a double century at Sabina Park to level the series at 1-1. By the time the teams reached Kensington Oval in Bridgetown on 26 March, West Indies had climbed back from the floor and could move ahead in the series for the first time with a win here.
Steve Waugh won the toss for Australia and chose to bat first on a pitch that would only get harder to score on as the match wore on, a decision that shaped everything that followed.
Steve Waugh's marathon
Australia lost Matthew Elliott and Michael Slater cheaply, both out inside the first 14 overs, and at 36 for 3 the innings needed rebuilding. Justin Langer and Steve Waugh put on 108 for the fourth wicket, and once Langer was bowled for 51, Waugh found a new partner in Ricky Ponting and simply kept batting. The two of them added 281 for the fifth wicket, the innings that decided the shape of the match. Waugh made 199 off 376 balls before he was given out lbw, one run short of what would have been an extraordinary double century, and Ponting made 104 off 290 balls. Australia were eventually all out for 490, with Nehemiah Perry taking 3 for 102 and Curtly Ambrose (2 for 93) and Courtney Walsh (2 for 121) sharing the rest of the wickets across nearly 70 overs between them, a long, patient day's work against two batters who would not be shifted.
Campbell holds, Lara falls cheap
Replying to 490, West Indies lost Adrian Griffith to the third ball of the innings, run out without scoring, and then watched Brian Lara fall for just 8, caught behind off a full ball, with the total on 64. It left the innings in the hands of Sherwin Campbell, the opener, who built the kind of long, watchful century that a team chasing a huge first-innings total needs. Campbell made 105 off 271 balls, and found his best partner low in the order: he and the wicketkeeper Ridley Jacobs put on 153 for the seventh wicket, Jacobs making 68. Glenn McGrath took 4 for 128 and Jason Gillespie 3 for 48 as West Indies were eventually all out for 329, leaving Australia with a first-innings lead of 161.
Walsh turns it back
A lead of 161 with two full innings to come should have been a position of real comfort, but Australia's second innings collapsed early, five wickets down for just 48, before Shane Warne counter-attacked with 32 down the order. Courtney Walsh, bowling into a pitch that was now taking turn and uneven bounce, ran through the rest of it anyway. He took 5 for 39 from just over 17 overs, Curtly Ambrose added 2 for 60, and Australia were all out for 146. It was a startling turnaround: the side that had made 490 in the first innings lost its last three wickets, after Warne's defiant 32, for just 12 runs. The target left for West Indies was 308 to win, a total that would have looked comfortable before the innings began and looked considerably less so with a pitch playing every kind of trick by the fourth day.
Lara alone at one end
West Indies made a solid start in the chase, Campbell and Griffith adding 72 for the first wicket, but once Campbell was out lbw for 33 the innings went through a period no side chasing 308 can afford: Dave Joseph and Pedro Collins both gone for just 6 more runs, and Griffith following soon after to make it 91 for 4. Carl Hooper soon followed for 6, and at 105 for 5 the match had swung back towards Australia. What kept West Indies in the game was Brian Lara, who had come in at 78 for 3 and simply stayed. He found his best partnership of the innings with Jimmy Adams, the pair adding 133 for the sixth wicket as the score moved from 105 to 238, batting through spells from Glenn McGrath, who finished with 5 for 92, and Jason Gillespie, who took 3 for 62. When Adams was out for 38 and Jacobs and Perry followed quickly, West Indies were 248 for 8, still 60 runs short with only Ambrose and Walsh left to support their captain.
The last pair
Ambrose, never a batter by trade, stayed with Lara for 54 priceless runs, the pair taking the score from 248 to 302 before Ambrose was caught off Matthew Elliott. That left Courtney Walsh, one of the least reliable batters ever to play Test cricket, to see West Indies home with 6 runs still needed. He did not need to score them himself. Lara, who had reached his hundred earlier in the partnership with Adams, farmed the strike and finished the match unbeaten on 153 off 256 balls as the total crossed 308. West Indies closed on 311 for 9, winning by one wicket with Walsh still there at the non-striker's end. Australia's attack, needing only one more wicket for almost three hours, could not find it.
What it meant
It was Lara's second match-defining innings in successive Tests, coming ten days after his 213 in Kingston, and it put West Indies ahead in the series with one match to play. He was named man of the match, and the Bridgetown Test is remembered as the middle innings of a fortnight in which Lara, on his own, turned a series that had begun with West Indies bowled out for 51 into one they were now winning. For Australia, the collapse to 48 for 5 and then all out for 146 in the second innings, after a first-innings total of 490, was the difference between a routine win and a demoralising defeat, and it showed how quickly the Kensington Oval pitch had changed character over four days.
The full scorecard for this match, including every fall of wicket and partnership, is on this page. You can follow both sides further on their West Indies and Australia team pages, and in The Follow-On you can take either XI into the middle and try to finish a chase the way Lara did.
Sources
- CricArcade Test archive: the full scorecard, fall of wickets and partnerships on this page
- ESPNcricinfo: Australia in West Indies 1998/99, third Test scorecard and report
- Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2000: the tour of the West Indies