The disgustingly stupid and weird day of cricket

I have just witnessed some of the oddest cricket you will see.

Let's try to start at the beginning; West Indies win the toss and bowl, sure fine, this is ok.

Except for Jayden Seales and Kemar Roach struggle to get anything going. So they gave the ball to Kyle Mayers, a medium-pacer somewhere between Paul Collingwood and Colin de Grandhomme. He bowls a medium dead straight comfy throw down to Zac Crawley who somehow manages to find cover.

It is important to remember all the weird shit that follows started with this incredibly benign white bread wicket.

From there England lose 7/44. The ball did more for most wickets, but there was some grim English batting. Apparently, they'd been told they could not play forward to balls. Lawrence missed a straight one with his head over the sixth stump. Root was nicked off by Mayers' devious mediums. And there were some delicious balls in there, though many of them were helped by English batting.

Seales was moving it both ways, Roach was nipping around some unplayable balls, Mayers burgled two and Joseph finally found 90MPH+ on the regular.

But then it all changed, like the pitch had flattened (sorry, Ramiz Raja) or more likely the soft ball stopped moving laterally and bouncing as inconsistently. So while they were 67/7, it would make sense the tail would bounce a little. Craig Overton's not quite all-round batting matches with Chris Woakes for a while to push the score to 90 before Overton missed one. That was very fair and normal.

What no one expected was the West Indies to help so much. The last overs before tea they used their seventh and eighth bowlers. They came in with five seamers and Kraigg Brathwaite as their backup moon ball specialist. And yet they still gave the ball to Nkrumah Bonner's friendly leggies and Jermaine Blackwood's awful off-spin.

Joshua Da Silva spent much of Blackwood's over saying, "let's test him on the front foot". Never a good sign when your part-time offie is trying to bounce someone out. I can only assume they were bowling for the over rate. They looked as likely to get a wicket as a fart would stop a tsunami.

Leach played the shot of the day, a reaching cover drive that elicited ironic cheers from an English fan base not drunk enough to deal with the first half of the day.

England had crawled through broken glass to 114/8 at the break.

After tea Chris Woakes completely gifted the West Indies a wicket with a loose, limp-wristed half-hearted furball drive. It was a terrible shot, and yet in the scheme of things, maybe the best cricket of the last session.

This brought together Jack Leach and Saqib Mahmood. They had 36 overs left to bat in the day. But of course they didn't, as they are the numbers ten and eleven, on a pitch their top order has shown us through dismissal and surprise is not easy to bat on.

With Joseph still over 90 miles an hour, it was only a matter of time. And for a while, he and Seales attacked the outside edge with Mahmood missing and Leach defending well enough. Then they went short, because there were tail enders there. When that didn't work, they brought Mayers and Roach back on. Mayers got an edge, but it dropped short of slip. Then Holder came on. So the 58th over was Joseph, and the 64th was Holder. In the space of seven overs the West Indies went through their entire five man frontline attack.

Roach, Mayers and Holder finished off the next few overs, and at the end of the 71st over, Leach had 30 from 92, and Mahmood had 12 from 55.

That is when Bonner brought his legspin back. He almost got a wicket as Mahmood danced down and got an inside edge back past the stumps for runs. But Bonner wasn't on for wickets, he was on to get the West Indies to the new ball, because they had given up with the old one.

Mahmood seemed to realise that with all of his 227 first class run experience. So he starts to attack and smashes a wide full ball to John Campbell at cover who drops the catch from Mayers' bowling.

Oh, and if you are already wondering, Leach was dropped too. Before tea a wide yorker he somehow managed to edge to slip, and Mayers dropped it.

Next ball after Mahmood's chance, he decided to punish them by dancing down to a length ball and slogging it over wide long on for his maiden first class six.

Brathwaite came on after this, trying to get to the new ball quickly by bowling slowly. In one over Da Silva let through six byes. He let through 18 byes in total, making him England's fifth-leading scorer. One ball went through his legs like he was playing tunnel ball on school camp. According to ESPNcricinfo he said, "I am so terrible. I am the worst keeper in the whole entire universe," via the stump mic.

I didn't hear this, so I can't verify, but I saw and lived it.

Oh. And just on Brathwaite, when he came on, it meant that in 16 overs, the West Indies had used seven bowlers to the numbers 10 and 11. They used more bowlers than they had plans. That was always going to be the case, as there never seemed to be even one plan.

The 50 partnership is allowed through by Joseph, who gets a ball hit straight to him, doesn't even pick it up, or wake up, as they jog through for the run. He allows another run the following over. Two catches, two missed run outs, fuckloads of byes, eight bowlers, and West Indies have as much energy as a decomposing corpse in the field.

And I don't want to talk up the batting too much here either. Mahmood played and missed many times. Leach was his normal compact tempered self. Better than his epic one, not as great as his Lord's winning 92. They weren't amazing, the ball just went a bit soft and West Indies lost the plot.

Let me tell you the bit of cricket that summed all this up best. Bonner bowls a half tracking straight spinner. Mahmood rocks back and swings hard at a pull shot that he might as well have hit with a wet piece of paper. Seales sees the ball go past him and decides there's no point chasing it. Before he realises it's moving so damn slow. So he then pursues it to the boundary, dives head first to save a run, and almost slams into a sponsor sign neck first.

Shit, shit, shit and shit.

At this point the West Indies were bowling for over rates while hoping that one of these batters would trip over their own dick and get out.

Mahmood swept a single, meaning he and Leach were now the highest scorers in the innings. But the new ball came on, and obviously that would end it. Instead, Mahmood punched it through covers to make his highest first-class score.

West Indies seemed unsure of what to do with the new ball; after asking it nicely to produce the wicket on its own. Then they started to actually formulate a plan, and both tail end legends started finally playing and missing for the first time in over two hours.

But they still produced some nice shots, like where Mahmood straight drove Joseph back down the ground. It was at this point that Joseph and Seales started sledging. I don't want to sound like the moral arbiter of when you can chirp. But it ain't the time to run your mouth when people are off looking up if numbers 10 and 11 ever made 50s in the same innings.

(Shout out to my boys Ken Higgs and John Snow).

They survived the new ball and mouthy barrage until it got dark. So Brathwaite had the opportunity to go off the field and hide in a cupboard but chose to bowl himself. Including one ball at 68KPH that seemed like a final troll to the West Indians tied to a chair with matchsticks keeping their eyelids open.

In the last over, he brought back Blackwood to give Mahmood his half-century when he was on 45. There was a chance that tomorrow when bizarro day was over, Mahmood would be knocked over first ball. So after patting back a couple of club offspin deliveries, he launched a full and straight drive that almost took Leach out. Which was probably the closest he came to being dismissed.

Then next ball Blackwood delivers another of those half trackers that Da Silva had mocked earlier. This time Mahmood - instead of using this easy ball to bring up his maiden professional 50 - drags it from outside off stump from the toe of the bat, it takes his stumps with a sigh, and he's out. For 49. The final session never failed to disappoint.

It was a disgusting, stupid and weird way to finish this day of cricket. It was funny, but rarely ha ha.

And it is possible I got some of the details wrong, or forgot something important. And to that I say, do you really expect me to go back and fact check that monumentally stupid day of cricket?

There are probably stats, I could give you analysis or even do a match report, but instead, I have vomited the cricket to you as it was vomited to me.