Late wickets hand Aussies series win

Last Saturday evening, basking in the triumph of a Boxing Day century that underpinned another day of batting dominance by Australia, Usman Khawaja foreshadowed that – unlike the opening Test in Hobart – the match in Melbourne would become a "grind".

Not so much as a spectacle, but in the expectation that the flat but well-grassed MCG pitch, coupled with a new-found will by the struggling tourists to put up a an improved showing, would make the capture of the 20 wickets needed for victory a sizeable task.

Even then, the notion it would take until 6.01pm on an elongated fourth day to finally scuttle a West Indian batting line-up set an unthinkable 460 to win was more grind than the Australians had imagined.

WATCH: All 10 Windies wickets on day four

And if not for a dramatic last hour, during which a resilient if under-equipped visiting batting line-up finally cracked open and coughed up 5-32 in the space of 10 overs, they would have sent the game into the uncharted territory of a fifth day.

In fairness, the result – an Australia victory by 177 runs to take a 2-0 series lead and retention of the Frank Worrell Trophy – would have come far earlier if the Australian bowlers had not been so careless as to hand back three hard-earned wickets deemed in retrospect to have fallen from no-balls. 

But the fight shown by a West Indian outfit so clearly outclassed but impressively led by their skipper Jason Holder and a handful of equally resilient young charges meant it was almost an injustice that they were not able to hang on long enough to see a fifth morning.

WATCH: Highlights of Holder's defiant innings

Doubtless mindful of the resistance the West Indian batsmen had been able to muster in their first innings – the first time they’ve survived beyond 100 overs since their home series against England last April - Steve Smith signalled an urgency to let his bowlers loose.

Although yet another Test century beckoned with the Australia captain unbeaten on 70 overnight, Smith instead opted to terminate his team’s innings with their stumps lead of 459 and give his bowlers two full days – a minimum of 180 overs – to prise out 10 West Indian wickets.

Or, fancifully, for the tourists to bat longer than any previous West Indian line-up has managed in the fourth innings of a Test to claim a draw or score more than any team (bar England’s timeless 654 in Durban on the cusp of WWII) has managed in a fourth innings in Test history to steal a famous win.

From the outset, it was clear the latter outcome was not being seriously entertained by a team needing to score at more than two and half runs an over across two days to win, but that the notion of surviving for that period was being actively considered.

Kraigg Brathwaite and Rajendra Chandrika equalled their most productive opening partnership of the series – the 35 they fashioned in the first innings – before Brathwaite was caught at slip aiming an ambitious cut shot against Nathan Lyon.

WATCH: Man-of-the-match Lyon takes seven

At which point, midway through the 12th over, Chandrika had scored four.

The subsequent arrival of first innings batting barnacle Darren Bravo (81 in more than six hours) suggested the pace might slow further although the degree of difficulty in extracting the next breakthrough was clearly on the rise.

Which was why the third occurrence in this Test of an Australia bowler claiming a wicket only to have the video umpire belatedly call no-ball for overstepping had such a dispiriting impact on Smith and his men.

While the culprit both times in the first innings was James Pattinson, the beneficiary of his inattention was tail-ender and Test debutant Carlos Brathwaite who was considered to be in the midst of a cameo. 

However, today’s offender was Josh Hazlewood – leader of the Australia attack in the absence of Mitchell Starc and recently honoured as the ICC’s Emerging Player of the Year – who ultimately went wicketless in the match despite having the obdurate Bravo ‘caught behind’ for 12.

WATCH: Hazlewood joins no-ball club

In the excruciating minute or more of forensic video examination it took to deem the delivery illegal, the temperature in the Australian players’ on-field huddle soared well beyond the mild summer maximums that Melbourne has turned on for the first four days of the Test.

Smith’s anger was palpable, Hazlewood frustration beyond boiling point and the push for victory that most had viewed as inevitable was stalled, with danger it might become utterly becalmed.

"I think these no-balls are having an effect," former champion legspinner Shane Warne said upon the resumption of the game after lunch, at which stage Bravo had taken his score on to 14 and the Australians remained nine wickets shy of victory.

"After lunch, they are looking a bit flat."

The eventual dismissal of Bravo for 21 – 23 minutes and much teeth gnashing after he was unfairly dismissed – signalled only more frustration as Marlon Samuels (who was almost scratching his guard before the Bravo wicket was overruled) made his second purposeful journey to the middle.

It was not easy to explain Samuels’ enthusiasm to get to the crease as Bravo trudged reluctantly off, particularly in light of his usually indolent approach to the wicket, indeed the game.

But especially when considering his recent run of form as a Test batsman, with an aggregate of 42 runs from his previous seven innings over the past six months representing a comparable return from the likes of Trent Boult, Yasir Shah and Morne Morkel.

None of whom are paid to make runs for a living.

And it came at a far more purposeful clip than did his departure after more than an hour at the crease, in which he once more teased that he was about to blossom into the form that he can undoubtedly produce only to surrender his wicket when he should have settled in.

WATCH: Mitch Marsh steps up to take four

Despite more than a decade of indifferent performances when his team needs him most – he averages just 23 in 10 Tests against Australia but almost 70 when tackling Bangladesh – West Indies coach Phil Simmons believes the 34-year-old still has something to offer the long-form game. 

"I can’t say it's time to think he won't (deliver)," Simmons said in the wake of his team’s first innings in which Samuels again under-delivered by contributing a duck.

"He's been one of the top batsmen for West Indies. He has the class and he can deliver.

"I don't believe in writing him off. 

"He's struggled but it's up to him to get his head in the right space for the second innings."

As it turned out, that second innings stretched more than an hour further than his first, and the value he placed on his wicket in the course of his 77-minute stay sent the appropriate message to those who followed as the Australians laboured fruitlessly into the early evening.

Chandrika’s most productive Test innings of 37 off 130 balls lasted more than two and a half hours before being adjudged lbw to Pattinson, the West Indian batsman’s review of the verdict confirming his ill luck when the ball tracking technology showed it marginally clipping the leg bail.

Jermaine Blackwood, who recorded a pair of ducks in the first Test in Hobart and a stoic 28 in the first innings in Melbourne, hung around for a few minutes and a single run longer than Samuels before he was also adjudged lbw to a line-ball call.

Captains past (Denesh Ramdin) and present (Holder) then combined skill and will to post the West Indies’ first 100-run partnership of the series as they pushed the day into its final hour with half of their second innings wickets intact.

WATCH: Highlights of Ramdin's fighting fifty

The disappointment that Ramdin, who has endured an even longer stretch of sub-par batting contributions than Samuels over the past year (with only one previous score above 50), showed upon feathering a catch off Mitchell Marsh in the lengthening shadows told its own story.

The relentlessly maligned West Indian batsmen who had proved even more difficult to prise loose than Khawaja and his teammates had foreseen.

And yet they had still barely made it half way to the draw they dared dream of when their innings had begun.

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