Hodge, Arnberger cause headaches for West Indies

After being bowled out for less than one hundred twice in its 1-3 series loss to England earlier this year, it was always argued that it was West Indies' batting that was likely to shape as its biggest problem on this Australian tour.

Come next week and the first Test meeting between them and Australia, though, batting may well constitute only so much as half of the tourists' dilemmas.

At least, that is what their performance suggested today in the first-class match against Victoria at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

After keeping the tourists to an inadequate 167 in the first innings yesterday - a total that could have been significantly smaller had number eight batsman Mahendra Nagamootoo not shown the resistance that allowed him to score a defiant forty-eight - the Victorian batsmen today did it easily, ending the day 137 runs ahead with seven wickets in hand. At stumps on day two, Victoria is very comfortably placed at 3/304.

Led by Brad Hodge (134*) and Jason Arnberger (99), the Bushrangers performed in a manner that belied their bottom placing on the domestic first-class competition ladder. Here was a team that had lost each of its first two Pura Cup matches of the season by huge margins. Yet today, it managed to make its international opposition look completely underdone. With due credit to the Victorians, this arguably says more about the standard of West Indian cricket than about Australia's own national competition.

Following their forgettable batting performance yesterday, vice-captain Sherwin Campbell had hoped a solid showing with the ball would be the confidence builder from which the West Indians could draw inspiration in the second innings. Unfortunately, his bowlers, for the most part, were disappointing.

Nixon McLean, tipped to be Courtney Walsh's opening bowling partner in next week's Test in Brisbane, was punished heavily. In the last session of the day, by way of example, the tall right armer went for twenty-three runs off four overs.

Nevertheless, it has to be said that he was a little unlucky. After capturing the early wicket of Shawn Craig (1), he should have had the scalp of Matthew Mott (18) alongside his name as well, but a cut shot from the nuggety right hander was dropped by Daren Ganga at gully with his score on a mere three.

This was not the only chance missed by the West Indian fielders. Michael Klinger (38*) would have been out at sixteen but for a miss at slip by Campbell. Instead, Klinger and Hodge made light work of their opponents, hitting them to all parts of the ground with ease in a fluent display.

Before Klinger, it was Arnberger who had aided Hodge in the task of overtaking the Windies' first innings total. The pair added 121 runs for the third wicket in 132 minutes, sailing past the tourists' score when Hodge lofted leg-spinner Nagamootoo (0/61 off fourteen overs) over the long-off fence. Clearly, it had been that sort of a day for them.

Walsh was the best of the West Indian attack, with 1/44 off 23 overs. Today's wicket-takers, McLean and Merv Dillon, returned 1/78 off twenty-one overs and 1/75 off twenty-three respectively.

At the end of the day, Windies' coach Roger Harper said it had been a difficult one for his team. "Tough is an understatement. Three hundred runs in a day is a lot more than we would've liked, a lot more than we wanted, a lot more than the goal we set ourselves in allowing them to score. And we could have done a lot, lot better. We weren't consistent, we weren't accurate enough, we bowled both sides of the wicket and they just took advantage of it," he said.

"In the context of the way the game is played these days, you expect teams to score somewhere in the region of two and a half runs an over. But to score over three runs an over, especially against our attack, which is a Test attack, is much too many. It's simple, the consistency wasn't there and the patience wasn't there and that was about it. We never really got the ball in the right place," he said.

Compounding the West Indians' problems is an injury to captain Jimmy Adams, who was hit on the nose by a Marlon Black delivery this morning in the nets. Adams, who was on and off the field today, will hopefully be fit to fully resume tomorrow.

If he is, he will be captaining a team which, in Harper's words, has "no choice but to come out and play good cricket."

Harper admitted the team is under-prepared for the Test series. "We may have wanted another match to prepare ourselves but this is the itinerary we've been set and we have to make the most of it and be as well prepared as we can. And I don't think we gave the performance in this match so far that would say to anyone that we are a team fully prepared to go into a Test match," he said.