/ Editor / 09 May 2007 /

A new coach, a new captain, but a familiar question: can the West Indies win a Test series overseas? They have not triumphed in an away rubber of three or more matches since 1992/93, when Richie Richardson's side won a five Test series in Australia.

The West Indies' away form has been so wretched that they have not won a single overseas Test since November 2003. That win came in Zimbabwe and the only other place to have brought a Test win in the last 40 encounters is Bangladesh. The new management axis of David Moore and Ramnaresh Sarwan clearly has a huge task ahead of it, as their team bids to regain the Wisden Trophy.

England received plenty of criticism for their brief acclimatisation period ahead of the last Ashes series and the 'Windies' might raise some eyebrows by playing just one warm-up game (on a Taunton wicket unlikely to replicate expected conditions) before the first Test at Lord's.

The summer's curtain-raiser begins on May 17th - nearly a month after the World Cup hosts closed their campaign with a meaningless Super Eight clash with England. The tourists have two Test debutants in their 15 man squad, Darren Sammy and Ravi Rampaul, and must decide on a starting eleven quickly. The three subsequent Tests follow swiftly, without any intervening tour games.

The touring party was always going to have a fresh look about it, as Brian Lara's retirement has left a gap larger than that of just one player. The Trinidad legend hit nearly 3,000 Test runs at an average of 62.14 against England and his experience in English conditions will be sorely missed.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Chris Gayle remain from the last West Indian team to win in England, at Edgbaston in June 2000, but the new look Caribbean batting line-up will be tested by early season English conditions.

Lara's place has effectively gone to Sylvester Joseph, whose career has stalled since he made his Test debut at Old Trafford on his team's last visit in 2004. Marlon Samuels - still at the centre of match-fixing allegations - has been surprisingly left out, whilst there is no specialist spinner or reserve wicket keeper to Denesh Ramdin.

The fast bowling supplies are therefore plentiful, with Fidel Edwards and Corey Collymore - who took nine wickets in six matches last time around - joined by Daren Powell and Jerome Taylor. Dwayne Bravo was a hit in 2004, scoring 220 runs and taking 16 wickets, and he will once again fulfil the all-rounder duties.

The West Indies have had their share of internal disputes and the arrival of the team in England will be a relief to those feared the tour might not happen. The familiar row over player contracts seems to have been resolved, although the threat of a ban to any player refusing to sign the tour contract cannot have helped the group's morale.

The Windies have also been dogged by selection disputes. Sarwan must build a better rapport with the selectors than Lara ever did - he frequently bemoaned the fact that the team he led was not one of his choosing - and the new skipper knows better than anyone the vagaries of the selection process.

Sarwan was dumped from the Test team midway through the last series, in Pakistan last December, and his deputy Daren Ganga has enjoyed a stop-start career. Sarwan and Ganga average 38.8 and 27.3 respectively in Tests and will be under great pressure to lead from the front with the bat.

Sarwan and chairman of selectors Gordon Greenidge have been quick to point out that this team is one in transition, but the pressure to arrest the steady decline of West Indies cricket will prevent them from enjoying a prolonged honeymoon period.

Lara's iconic status did not prevent him from being seen in a negative light by many followers due to the team's poor performances, but Sarwan at least looks like getting better backroom support. The touring party includes a team psychologist and for the first time since the Pakistan tour, a fitness trainer.

West Indian supporters will undoubtedly struggle to watch this new era develop without casting their mind back to more successful times. England were so often on the receiving end of the beatings the great Windies teams of the past handed out: they played 23 Tests in England between 1973 and 1988 without losing and held the Wisden Trophy for 31 years before surrendering it in 2000.

England have won 10 and drawn two of the last 12 meetings between the two sides and were victorious by considerable margins in the last six played in England. Michael Vaughan's men might not be in the same form that they were in 2004, but they nonetheless trade at 5.1 to repeat that clean sweep series scoreline of 4-0.

England were the last team apart from Bangladesh and Zimbabwe to provide the West Indies with an away win in a Test and punters expecting that seven year barren spell to come to an end next week might find 8.4, for the tourists to win the first Test, attractive. The home side are of course desperate to get back on track after Ashes hammering and trade at 1.7 to get off to a winning start.

The hosts have not lost a home series since 2001 and the only team apart from Australia to have won a series of two matches or more in England in the last 10 years, is New Zealand. England trade at 1.29 to win the series, with the West Indies trading at 9.6 and 7.2 the draw.

The Test series is followed by a three match One Day series and two Twenty 20 fixtures. Those clashes promise to be a lot tighter than the Tests might be, as both sides had equally wretched World Cup campaigns and cannot be split in their recent meetings, with both sides winning six apiece since the turn of the century.

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