England’s 1968 tour of West Indies contained incident aplenty off the field but turgid cricket on it, until a gamble that failed
There can’t be many Tests with such an unexpected twist as that between England and West Indies in Port of Spain, 52 years ago this week. Here’s Bruce Barber in the Guardian at the end of day three, under the headline “A disgrace to the name of cricket”: “In the mid-afternoon hours the only critical problem was to decide whether the batting or the bowling plumbed the lower depths …
“Some devil’s brew was served at lunch, for after that the name of cricket was tarnished. Carew, a second-change off-spinner who would be lucky to get on most Saturdays in league cricket, was allowed to bowl 13 overs, of which 12 were maidens, for one run and one wicket. The leg-breaks of Rodriguez were a distant approximation of that mystic art which Wright or O’Reilly would have disdained to own, so high was the proportion of full tosses and long hops and even no-balls. From 35 overs, 35 runs were struck.”
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