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Roston Chase and the strange case of a Test career that seems to be going nowhere


image-ld2vang4Roston Chase picked a fifer against Sri Lanka in 2021

For a batsman who effectively plays only one format, and that too, Test cricket, which’s widely considered the highest echelon of the sport, just how effective is Roston Chase today? 

At 30 years, Chase is 45 Test matches, 83 innings and 2,124 runs old for his West Indies. 

He doesn’t even average 30.

Truth is, he’s widely considered amongst the most focused, watchful and eager exports of Barbados to the West Indies cricket.

Truth also is that he cultivated himself to be a batsman that can ply his trade in all conditions. But as one notes today, is he one without whom the team can simply not function together as a batting unit? 

Furthermore, could it be that we’ve already seen some of his best knocks in the past, a period of time where Shai Hope was part of the Test side, when there was no such talent like a Joshua Da Silva and when a certain Jason Holder was the Test captain? 

In a game that’s often seeking fancy adjectives to decorate its showmen, perhaps it’s a touch sad that none can be attributed, of lately, to a promising batsman given the way his Test numbers have, for the lack of better expression, simply fallen apart. 

Big claim or random punt? 

Neither. 

Probably, just the truth or very nearly the way things are! 

During West Indies’s much appreciated tour of England, one that actually brought back cricket from the backburner during the peak Covid lockdown, circa July-August 2020, Roston Chase accumulated 157 careful runs from 6 innings (3 Tests), which included scores of 51 and a typically patient 47. 

Interestingly, in the first three of the six innings he played on English soil, Chase stuck on to the wicket, facing nearly 315 deliveries (The Rosebowl and Old Trafford Test included). 

He looked the part of the middle order batsman the West Indies so desperately sought- one that could keep the bad balls away and hit runs when width was offered. 

Miserly but patient in the process of run collection. 

But then 2020 didn’t quite round up nearly as well as the lanky right hander would’ve liked- he managed at the behest of a solitary fifty, just 174 runs from 10 Test matches. 

The average of 17 was extremely disappointing for a batsman who, back in the day, had fired useful hundreds including the famous 106 at the Rajiv Gandhi International stadium in India during the 2018 series. 

Not that things changed the following year in 2021.

As first South Africa and later, Pakistan came to challenge the authority of his West Indies, one of the more popular and lest it is forgotten, technically capable West Indian batsmen floundered even more considerably. 

If you were to randomly quiz someone on what was Roston Chase’s 2021 Test average, then the replier would perhaps be flummoxed altogether at being told it was no more than 12. 

Probably Ranji batsmen in an off series manage much more than what this premier West Indies Test batter managed. 

How? 

Of the 12 innings that the Barbadian played for his West Indies in 2021, 6 featured single digit scores, which included 2 ducks, one each against Pakistan at the Sabina Park and the other at Galle versus Sri Lanka. 

Just when he had indicated during his watchful 62 against the visiting Proteas that he still had the technique and the patience to hold fort, failures in subsequent innings marred his form. 

Frankly speaking, it wasn’t until the last year where the Roston Chase of the old finally seemed to surface even if that was at the back of his efforts in two Tests for that’s all he featured in for the West Indies. 

Making a respectable 115 runs from just 2 Tests, both of which came thousands of miles away from the balmy Caribbean sunshine at Down Under proved that Chase still had the mettle if not the magnanimous scores under his belt. 

A fact amplified by a gritty 55 against a Lyon, Cummins and Starc powered attack at Perth. 

Fundamentally speaking, what the West Indies need from their middle order batsman is exactly what he had demonstrated albeit under duress several summers ago, when against a Dhoni, Shami and Kohli-powered side, the right hander carved a truly gritty Test ton. 

But a little over six years on from that Jamaican jamboree, one sees little of that Roston Chase and ever so little of that relentless focus with the bat. 

It might even seem odd to submit that if there were any fears or anxieties such as other more capable batsmen like Darren Bravo or Shai Hope taking his side, then such notions bear no allegiance to truth. 

They no longer persist. 

Bravo’s career is going nowhere and Hope, effectively speaking, is now a one-day specialist.

This truly means that together with Kyle Mayers, Jermaine Blackwood, Nkrumah Bonner and Kraigg Brathwaite - Roston Chase forms the prime fulcrum of the Caribbean batting in the longer format. 

And while the faith of the selectors despite the batter having endured two horrific years in Tests- 2020 and 2021- persists, the big question is whether Roston Chase still has the willingness to persist for his Caribbean side.  

In every 5.5 Test appearances, Chase comes up with either a century or a fifty for the West Indies. That’s having hit 10 fifties and 5 tons from 83 innings. What he and his team would like most definitely would be lots of runs and surely, with an added bout of consistency if he’s to revive his flickering Test career. 

Right, Mr. Roston Lamar Chase?


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