Australia 2, West Indies 0. Just as everybody thought then: the tourists are threadbare in talent, lacking in the will to win, disorganised, unprofessional, without leadership. Better they give up and the team disbands (as some Australian pundits have suggested).

Anyone who had half an eye on the hard-fought Test series will know none of the above is true (apart from the scoreline). West Indies, dare I say it, are back. They have five months before the three-match home Test series against South Africa in June, and here are some reasons why this may mark the start of a West Indian revival:

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Sometimes we focus so much on what is wrong with Test cricket that it is easy to forget the joy it continues to provide, never more so than in this particularly frenzied period of Tests.

The recent series between India and Sri Lanka may have been too batsman-friendly but it provided some extraordinary passages of play. Who could not have wished to see Virender Sehwag’s assault in the third Test, elegant and brutal in equal measure? For Sri Lanka, Tillakaratne Dilshan’s innings were also moments when you had to bin ideas of work and focus on some ball-by-ball Test cricket. There were personal narratives too – Sreesanth, suddenly the grounded, almost geeky bowler of immaculate line and length, Murali suddenly lacking in fizz and accuracy. And Angelo Mathews – doing an Atherton when on 99 and in sight of his first Test hundred.

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Australian cricket journalists are a ravenous pack of animals that love fresh meat. Much like their cricketers. Perhaps you could say that most press pools are like their teams. You could say that England’s is prone to massive highs and despairing lows, much like their team. And that India’s press pool just isn’t as good away from home. I probably didn’t research this enough.

Summer after summer the Australian press have been thrown a meal masquerading as the opposition. Last year that all changed. Australia lost at home for the first time since Dakota Fanning was born. Then they lost another under-reported Test series.

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November 1993: Nelson Mandela ratified South Africa’s first democratic constitution, John Major and John Smith were arguing across the Commons floor and Norwich City gloriously dumped Bayern Munich out of the UEFA Cup. It was also the last time Australia had to bounce back from a home Test-series defeat. Now, 16 years later, Australia will be attempting to do so again. It’s been a long time.

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The word is that Vivian Richards has softened. He even told The Wisden Cricketer last year: “I look forward to peace and a tranquil way of life. I am more chilled than when I played.”

Who are you kidding Viv? I went to meet him last week to look back over his career for a forthcoming feature in TWC and there was a glint in his eye with each memory he recalled. By the end of it he was cursing the fact that his career had been and gone before the onset of Twenty20.

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Trinidad and Tobago captain Daren Ganga has led his team brilliantly in the Champions League so far. Last night, the team pulled off an astonishing win as Kieron Pollard made 54 not out from 18 balls when the West Indians looked buried. Afterwards, Ganga talked Stanford, Twenty20 and West Indies …

Could you give the full West Indies side a game – could you be a national side on your own?
We have played them in the past. But we are not thinking of taking on the West Indies. West Indies cricket is so much more valuable to all the West Indies people. It is the only thing in the Caribbean that unifies. The Champions League can be seen as a positive so that West Indies cricket in the end benefits. We have all seen the results of Sir Allen Stanford and his investment in the Caribbean and in young cricketers. What we are doing here will go and inspire so that West Indies cricket can be improved and enhanced.

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With Captain Floyd Reifer (that’s R-E-I-F-E-R)

I thought we were a bit unlucky against Pakistan but we proved right from the start that we can compete at this level, when I called correctly at the toss. There was a bit of awkwardness before the match this morning when I said “hello” to the reserve umpire Billy Bowden and he tried to give me an autograph but once I explained who I was that all got cleared up. Afridi told me that Bowden apparently tries to give everyone his autograph so I didn’t take it personally.

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The confidence of the West Indies batsmen in the Durham Test was low but they didn’t apply themselves as they could have. Take Chris Gayle’s 54 from 43 balls on Sunday evening: I don’t like it when a batsman plays like that in that situation in a Test. If I was the opposition I would have been happy – it was just a matter of time before he got out.

Read the rest of Richie Richardson’s blog here .

Richie Richardson is writing weekly for thewisdencricketer.com for the duration of the West Indies tour of England in association with the Antigua Tourist Board

As far as Test cricket is concerned, Chris Gayle is obviously a bit tired of it and has had enough of captaincy. Initially he didn’t want the job – he’s a pretty laid back guy and likes to take it easy, and the pressure of being captain, not necessarily on the field but all of the other things off it is one of his major concerns. He obviously needs a lot of time for himself, which he doesn’t get as captain. I can attest to that. My batting deteriorated after I became captain, and one of the reasons was that I didn’t have enough time to focus on my game or put in the type of personal practice and training that I was accustomed to. I empathise with him a little where that is concerned, but he’s got to look at himself as well, and if he’s not comfortable with the job, then there is nothing wrong in expressing that and people have got to respect that.

Read the rest of Richie Richardson’s blog here.

Richie Richardson is writing weekly for thewisdencricketer.com for the duration of the West Indies tour of England in association with the Antigua Tourist Board

I’m depressed. This hotel room is freezing. My hotel room in South Africa was a perfect temperature.

I look at my watch: 2.30pm. No rest for the wicked. I managed to snatch a quick 14 hours sleep but I’m still worn out.

God it’s cold in here. I call Fidel, get him to come and fix the heating. He says he just has to cook everyone’s breakfast, make up the beds, regrout a bathroom, carry Shiv to the jacuzzi – he doesn’t like to waste energy when he’s not batting – and then he’ll be up as soon as he can.

I bet Viv Richards didn’t have to put up with this. I take a nap while I wait, to try and keep my strength up. Eventually Fidel arrives, passes me my breakfast tray. I drop it. He runs downstairs to get another one. I take a quick nap.

He comes back, looks at the heater.

“You just have to turn this dial here to ‘ON’, skipper,” he says. “See? Now it’s on.”

It’s typical. The constant demands, the pressure, having to take responsibility for everything. All eyes on you. I wish I could practice turning the heater on and off but I don’t have time. But when I need to turn it on, I’ll be ready. If I’m not too tired through no fault of my own.

In South Africa, the heaters were brilliant. In fact, they don’t even have heaters there. They have air-conditioning. And there’s none of this long, drawn-out business of turning a dial. You just flick a switch and – boom – it’s the perfect temperature. Maybe in the future all hotel rooms will be like that. To be honest, I wouldn’t care. I don’t need a heater. Maybe Andrew Strauss does, but that’s his problem if he can’t figure out how the hotel room of the future will be temperature-controlled. He should mind his own business and not be talking about me when he should be talking about him.

I try and have a rest, but I can’t. I’m thinking about Andrew Strauss thinking about me when he’s trying to sleep, and then I start thinking about Andrew Strauss thinking about me thinking about him when I should be trying to sleep.

I wake up a few hours later, hardly rested at all, and soon it’ll be time for bed, before the whole exhausting treadmill starts again tomorrow.

By Alan Tyers