Tour of England 1988               Captain: Vivian Richards

32nd West Indies Test tour

    (May -August 1988)

Thirteenth Test-playing tour by West Indies to England

  (previous tour 1984)

After winning all Test matches against England in 1984 and 1985-86, West Indies were again expected to win the series.  Early in the season England appeared to have turned the corner by winning all three one-day internationals in the Texaco Trophy, and then salvaging a comfortable draw from the First Test, yet it proved in the end to be a false dawn. The selectors sacked Gatting, picked 23 different players and tried three captains, none of whom could contend with a West Indies side that thoroughly beat them in the next four Tests.West Indies had won 14 of the last fifteen encounters, while it had been thirty? Test matches since England had beaten their opponents.

Even more so than in 1984, West Indies depended on its fast bowling attack, being able to draw from a strength of six top-class pace bowlers, of whom neither Patterson nor Bishop could break into the regular Test XI. Short-pitched bowling was not an issue as Ambrose and Marshall found their wickets easier to come by when keeping the ball up to the bat.  

Other West Indies tours

Previous tour

India 1987-88

Next tour

Australia 1988-89

Next England tour

1991

Members of the Test tour party    (17)

Opening batsmen: Gordon Greenside, Desmond Haynes, Phil Simmons

Middle-order batsmen:  Keith Arthurton, Carl Hooper, Viv Richards, Richie Richardson, Gus Logie,

Wicket-keepers:  Jeffrey Dujon, David Williams

Spin bowler:  Roger Harper

Fast bowlers:  Curtly Ambrose, Winston Benjamin, Ian Bishop, Malcolm Marshall, Patrick Patterson, Courtney Walsh

Regional representation :

B - Barbados (3)

G  - Guyana (2)

Ja  - Jamaica (3)

L - Leeward Islands (5)

T - Trinidad & Tobago (4)

Average age of  team at time of first Test match

(2 June 1988) :

 27 yrs  2 months

ODI  Member of the one-day series squad for Texaco Trophy matches

Test Appearances made before the tour

Richards 94,  Greenidge 83,  Haynes 72,  Marshall 53,  Dujon 50,  Richardson 33,  Logie 23,  Harper 20,  Walsh 20,  Patterson 11,  Hooper 6,  Benjamin 4,  Ambrose 3,  Simmons 2,  Arthurton 0,  Bishop 0,  Williams 0.

Tour Officials

Physiotherapist Dennis Waight missed his only tour with West Indies between 1979-80 and 2000, because a neck operation required six months of rehabilitation.

Selectors

The team was chosen by a committee headed by Clyde Walcott.

Selection

Clyde Walcott persuaded the WI Board to increase the number of players from 16 to 17 in order to include Ian Bishop as well as Keith Arthurton.

The Board did not at first issue the name of a vice-captain, and eventually chose Gordon Greenidge.

Unavailable:  None known

Tour Party Announced :  20 April 1988.

Not selected :

Time between selection and departure from West Indies

  11 days

(20 April to 1 May)

Travel

BridgetownQ  London

On Sunday 1 May 1988 the team flew from Bridgetown, Barbados, to Heathrow Airport, London.  A press conference took place on 3 May.

Time spent in England

   100 days

(2 May - 10 August)

On-tour selection panel

Viv Richards (captain),   Gordon Greenidge  (vice-captain),  Jackie Hendriks (manager)

Reinforcements

None. 

In the match against Gloucestershire at Bristol, Phil Simmons was struck on the head by a rising delivery from David Lawrence and needed an emergency operation at Frenchay Hospital.  He was unable to play again on tour but was not replaced and remained with the tour party at his own expense (the West Indies Board paid only his medical expenses).

Richie Richardson broke a finger and did not play after the third Test match. Gordon Greenidge missed the fourth Test  with a muscle spasm in his neck

Fixtures/Results

† not first-class

§  one-day international (Texaco series)

Time spent in England before First Test: 

31 days

(2 ? May - 2 June)

Test appearances on tour

5  -  Ambrose,  Dujon,  Hooper,  Logie,  Marshall,  Richards,  Walsh.

4  -  Greenidge,  Haynes.

3  -  Benjamin,  Harper,  Richardson. 

2  -  Patterson

1  -  Arthurton

0  -  Bishop,  Simmons,  Williams.

Match appearances

T  Test match

o  one-day international 

x other match 

W won  L lost  D drawn  

N no result   A abandoned  

u unknown result

West Indies’ six previous Test tour results:

in India 1987-88 (4 Tests)

 - drew 1-1

in New Zealand 1986-87 (3 Tests)

 - drew 1-1

in Pakistan 1986-87 (3 Tests)

 - drew 1-1

in Australia 1984-85 (5 Tests)

 - won 3-1

in England 1984 (5 Tests)

 - won 5-0

in India 1983-84 (6 Tests)

 - won 3-0

Highlights

•   Gus Logie, with 81 and 95*, and Jeffrey Dujon 53 and 52 in the Lord’s Test, added 130 runs together in each innings to enable West Indies to recover from 54-5 in the first innings and then establish a huge lead

•   Gordon Greenidge scored the only century of the Test series: 103 at Lord’s.

•   Malcolm Marshall’s returns included 6-69 at Trent Bridge; 6-32 and 4-60 at Lord’s; and 7-22 at Old Trafford. His 35 wickets at 12.65 each broke the record for West Indies in a series against England.

•   Greenidge and Desmond Haynes each scored 77 in an opening partnership of 131 as West Indies chased 226 to win at The Oval to launch West Indies’ 4th consecutive triumph over England

Tour Summary

∎

F  Fixtures   W  Won   L  Lost  

D Drawn   T  Tied  Canc  Cancelled  Aban  abandoned

Return to West Indies

LondonQBridgetown

On approx 10 August 1988 the team flew from London, via New York to Bridgetown.  West Indies toasted their absent captain in hospital 

The Trinidad & Tobago pair Ian Bishop and David Williams flew on to Piarco Airport on a BWIA flight on Thursday afternoon 11 August. Jeff Dujon on the same flight got off in Barbados where he now lived. Gus Logie remained in New York.

Phil Simmons remained in England for further health checks

A West Indian side, captained by Jeff Dujon and made up of members of the touring squad plus Ralston Otto of Antigua, left Antigua on 26 August to play two 45-over matches against United States elevens in Washington DC on 27 and 28 August 1988.

Time away from West Indies    102 days  

(1 May to 11 August)

Finances

Published accounts of the tour

“West Indian Summer: the Test Series of 1988”     by Patrick Eager and Alan Ross  (Hodder & Stoughton, 1988).

Postscript

West Indies had failed to make progress in the 1987 Reliance World Cup;  could only draw the series against India and the next at home against Pakistan ; and then lost the one-day series against England on this 1988 tour.  Viv Richards’ captaincy came under scrutiny but with England in disarray over the captaincy, defections to South Africa and  hit-and-miss selection strategy, he seized the chance to restore his side to the triumphs of the Clive Lloyd era with a 4-0 victory.  Gus Logie had stepped into Larry Gomes’s role of bolstering the middle-order batting while Curtly Ambrose came as a perfect replacement for Joel Garner.

Other Test tours in 1988

Sri Lankans to England 1988  -  captain Ranjan Madugalle

Acknowledgements

To general reading of The Times newspaper digital archive (Gale Group);  Jamaica Gleanor archive;  National Library of Australia Trove; Papers Past NZ.

From former British Newspaper Library, Colindale and online:  The Age, Melbourne Argus, Bangladesh Daily Star, Barbados Advocate, Canberra Times, Daily Telegraph, Dawn, Eastern Daily Press, The Hindu, The Independent (Dhaka), Indian Express, The Island (Lanka), Lahore Times, New Nation, New Zealand Auckland Herald, Sri Lanka Daily News, Stabroek News, Straits Times, Sydney Morning Herald, The Telegraph (Calcutta), Times of India (Bombay) , The Tribune (Chandigarh), Trinidad Guardian, The West Australian.

cricketweb.net;  ESPN cricinfo;  cricket archive; www.cricketcountry; www.coverpoint

Magazines/periodicals including Australian Cricket, B & H West Indies Annual, The Cricketer International, Cricketer Quarterly, Indian Cricket, Indian Cricket Field Annual, Playfair Cricket Monthly, Shell Cricket Almanack of New Zealand, Wisden Cricket Monthly, Wisden Book of Test Cricket, Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack.

Men In White, A History of Australian Cricket (Harte), A History of Indian Cricket (Bose), A History of West Indies Cricket (Manley)

Biography and tour books (own collection and at the M.C.C. Library at Lord’s Ground)                                    ALL CONTENTS OF THE TEST-CRICKET-TOURS.CO.UK WEBSITE  ARE COPYRIGHT