It was a series to remember for him, and not just with the ball: he had the best batting average on either side, and the fourth-highest runs tally
Danyal Rasool28-Jan-2025If you ask ChatGPT, or its newly ascendant competitor DeepSeek, what the perfect Test series looked like, the responses are lengthy, vague, and non-committal. Perhaps one day, when they learn how to limit them to four words or fewer, “Jomel Warrican in Pakistan” would suffice as the perfectly succinct response.Warrican’s dominance of this series has been uniquely legendary. He’s taken the most wickets, of course, more than every other West Indian bowler combined. The best bowling figures in an innings, and in a match, belong to him. No one with more than two wickets could boast a better bowling average this his single-digit 9, none managed an economy rate as miserly as his 2.38. For good measure, he also has the highest batting average on either side across the series, the highest strike rate for anyone over 25 runs, and the fourth-highest run tally.The smattering of Tests he has played in the subcontinent over the past decade have demonstrated his value on spin tracks. But nothing could quite prepare Warrican for what he found in Multan, where, ahead of the series, his captain Kraigg Brathwaite had said he had never seen cracks appear this early in his 96-match Test career anywhere else. It gave the spinners more opportunities, but also greater responsibility.Related
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It was a responsibility that Warrican and his little band of spinners failed to live up to early on in the first Test. In the first 57 overs of the game, Pakistan had put up 187 runs, with spin managing just one wicket when Gudakesh Motie – who Pakistan believed was a greater threat than Warrican before the series – squeezed Shan Masood down the leg side.By the time the West Indies spinners made their presence felt, Pakistan already had enough runs, and then never fell behind in the game. Warrican kept trying to find extra rip doing the same thing over and over, but ended the innings with just three wickets, two of them of tailenders.The intelligence Warrican deployed over the remainder of the series, though, has been anything but artificial. “Speed’s very important,” he said at the post-match presentation after the second Test, where he was awarded both the Player of the Match and Series. “We worked out that the slower you bowled, the more effective you would be on these wickets. Once I got more information, I used it to my advantage.”From the second innings of the first Test onwards, Warrican was doing things slightly differently. The lines or lengths he was landing the balls at barely changed. But through the air, it was a different story. He fizzed some balls through, held others longer in his hand, and tossed some up. To the right-hander, there was always the danger of the ones that carried on with the arm, making the most instinctively safe shot – the front foot forward defensive – feel uncomfortably perilous. Mohammad Hurraira and Babar Azam were the first two to fall this way in Pakistan’s second innings, and Warrican never looked back.
“I just back my game plan. Once the ball is in my zone, I back myself to play it to the boundary. I also trust my defence, and try to rotate the strike.”Jomel Warrican on his batting
“The variation in pace is effective when you’re consistent,” he said. “You vary the pace, and hit the same length over and over. The consistency is the key thing to everything in life.”Those were the first two of seven wickets Warrican took that innings, and started a run where he bagged 16 of the 30 Pakistan wickets that fell in the series since. But it wasn’t just with the ball that he contributed significantly. Before this series, no side in Test history ever had Nos. 9-11 in their line-up contributing the three highest scores of an innings. In little over four days of cricket, West Indies managed it twice. Warrican was the top-scorer on one occasion, and the second-highest another time.It wasn’t exactly technically soundproof, but he ended up preying on any bowler who viewed him like a classic tailender. He smeared Sajid Khan and Noman Ali away when they pitched the ball up and full; no one hit more sixes than him all series. Warrican’s signature shot, though, was the reverse sweep with the back of the bat, one he used like a bludgeon rather than a surgical tool.Sajid ill-advisedly decided to taunt him on the penultimate day when he missed one of these heaves, getting up close and giving him the “you can’t see me” gesture. Warrican appeared unfazed.Jomel Warrican also had the highest batting average on either side across the series•Pakistan Cricket Board”I just back my game plan,” he said. “Once the ball is in my zone, I back myself to play it to the boundary. I also trust my defence, and try to rotate the strike. I had belief. I backed us to win the [second] game. The fightback we showed in the second innings, bowling out Pakistan for a cheap total. We knew once we batted well, we were in with a chance to win the game.”In a final twist of fate, it was Sajid who stood at the batter’s end when Warrican, and West Indies, needed one more wicket to seal victory. Sajid had tentatively tried to push the ball into the on side, but, just like Babar and Hurraira in the first Test, didn’t account for the arm ball. It pierced through the gap between bat and pad, and made a mess of his stumps.Warrican gave him the same gesture, before raising his right leg and thumping his hand to his thigh: Sajid’s own signature celebration. Right to the last moment of the series, it appeared, he had been gaining more information, picking up everything he saw in Multan, and ensuring he left with the last laugh.